


Blue Milk

by zamwessell



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, First Kiss, First Time, Fix-Everything, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, M/M, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Teen Angst, heavily indebted to Heathers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-20
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-05-15 03:43:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5769955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zamwessell/pseuds/zamwessell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kylo Ren's teen angst bullshit has a body count.<br/>A new high school brings with it a new start, an unlikely friend, and a new chance to screw everything up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the high-school AU that has been eating me up inside since seeing the movie. Everyone is the little bit OOC that putting them on the Earth of now demands. (Sorry, Chewie. I could not figure out a way to make you not a dog.)
> 
> Also, wow, you only realize how fucked-up these poor babies are when you try to import them into the normal world. They have some serious issues. I'm trying to tag everything appropriately as it arises; the "Heathers" analogy should serve as a warning for the headspaces this goes to, although ultimately it's a redemption arc which means nobody we care about is going to do anything unforgivable, and not the loose oh-it-he'-s-my-dad-that-genocide-was-fine Star Wars way.
> 
> This is an earth where the Star Wars movies do exist.

“Look,” Kylo says, gesturing for emphasis. “Even the dog acts weird around me now.”

He’s talking to himself but it feels good saying it out loud. Both of his parents are downstairs making breakfast and he can hear the sound of arguing and dishes clinking against each other. He’s in his bedroom attacking his favorite black sweatshirt with a lint roller. Chewbacca is backed up against the wall as far as he can go, making one of his whines that Kylo used to think were his way of trying to talk. Or rather, Ben used to. Ben was an idiot like that, Kylo reflects. But he’s just a dog and the whine probably means he needs to urinate or is hungry or there’s something he doesn’t like the smell of. “What the fuck, Chewie,” Kylo mumbles, “come on. Don’t be like that. You of all people.” He catches his own eye in the mirror, pulls a face. “Of all dogs.”

He gets into a squat and gestures with his fingers. The dog doesn’t come, sits there in the corner whining.

“Seriously,” Kylo says, more earnest than he means to, “what? I never did anything to _you_.”

He rubs his hands down the front of his jeans. His palms are sweating.

“Ben!” his dad yells.

“He’s not going to answer to that,” he hears his mother say, sotto voce. He grits his teeth, dreading what comes next, the part where she says the name out loud and it’s like the air quotations around it are the most important letters. “Kylo?” _There_ it is.

“Coming,” he shouts.

He hears his dad mutter something, not sure what.

“Please don’t start,” his mother says.

The dog is still in the corner. “What the fuck is the matter with you?” Kylo asks. “Do you not recognize me, is that your problem?” He sighs. “(You’re talking to a dog, you do realize this.)" Sometimes when he talks to himself it comes out as an unintentional echo of someone else; he’s in a room full of old maps and dust and carved walking sticks. It’s weird when the voices in your head are other people’s voices. Level, logical, disappointed.

“Kylo?” his dad calls. He fucking hates the way the name sounds when his dad says it. Every time it’s like he’s hoping he’s going to change his mind. Every fucking time.

He puts down the lint roller, zips the hoodie, glares at the dog.

“Fine,” he says. He gives it the finger. “Be that way.”

When he gets downstairs there’s milk and orange juice and pancakes. His mother’s drawn a circle on one of them in syrup so it looks like a Death Star. It’s in the wrong place but she’s clearly trying. He wishes she wouldn’t. He wishes none of them would.

“Morning,” she says. “Senior year. How do you feel?”

“Second time’s the charm,” his dad says.

“It could hardly be worse,” Kylo says, eating the focus lens of the Death Star first. “Could it?”

There is the uncomfortable silence that he hoped and expected this remark would provoke, and then they both start talking at once.

“You’d have to work pretty hard at it, but it’s possible,” his dad says and, “No,” his mother says, “there’s absolutely no way.”

He finishes the pancake in silence.

“So,” his mother says, “ _that_ ’s what you’re wearing.”

“Yes,” he says. “Do you have a problem with it?”

“No,” she says. “I was just. No. Wear what you want.”

He hates how nervous they are around him now. But it’s a kind of power that he has over them, and power is useful to have. However you come by it. He wishes he had learned that sooner. He wishes Ben had learned that at all. Before --

“Who’s driving me?” he asks.

“I will,” his mother says. “Your father will pick you up.”

“Your uncle says to break a leg,” his dad says.

“That’s not a normal thing to wish someone on a first day of school,” Kylo says. “It’s specifically for people who are involved in theater.” He pushes the last pancake around. “Maybe he means it maliciously.”

“He didn’t mean it maliciously,” his dad says. “I think he assumed you were involved in theater after he got the most recent pictures.”

“Did he actually,” Kylo says. “I thought he wasn’t talking to us any more.”

“Not him,” his dad says. “Uncle Lando.”

“He’s not really my uncle,” Kylo says. “Dad, you can’t just call your weird friends my uncles. It leads to confusion.”

“You’re going to be late if we don’t leave,” his mother says.

He gets up and pushes his chair in – force of Ben’s habit – grabs his backpack, follows his mother to the garage.

They drive along in silence. There’s a stop light.

“Could you find a high school any farther away from everything?” he asks.

She fixes him with a look. “That was sort of the idea, wasn’t it?”

“The Internet exists,” Kylo says. “They’re going to find out.”

“They’ll know you by then.” But she sounds worried. He wonders when he first noticed his parents were just people, worried, vulnerable. Old. Ben never used to. His mother looks older now than she used to. He wonders how much of that is his fault.

“I can tell when you’re lying.” He stares out the window. He has never seen anything more disgusting and generic in his life; just shopping island after shopping island with variable nail salons and coffee chains and grocery stores. It’s like a mad lib of chains unfurling past the window. “Do I have to do this?”

“You’re going to do this,” she says. “And we’re proud of you for doing it.”

“Grandpa never finished high school.”

She sighs. “Exactly my point.”

“He helped a lot of people.”

“I’ve told you. No. Not on net. What he did wasn’t helping people. It just sounds cool because your brain hasn’t finished developing yet.”

They pull up at the school – it looks even more generic and sad, if that’s possible -- two despondent shoeboxes reclining next to a football field. They enter the carpool line behind a big SUV. “Why are you doing this to me?” he asks.

“Nobody’s doing anything to you,” his mother says. “It’s a second chance. Some people never get them.”

“I know who you’re referring to.”

“I wasn’t,” she says. “That’s you thinking it, not me.”

“I told you I can tell when you’re lying.”

“B-Kylo,” she says, almost smoothly. “That’s enough.” And they’re at the front of the line. She pushes the button to unlock the door. “Now go have a good day. I love you.”

“I know,” Kylo says.

He gets out and she drives off. He puts his hands into the pockets of his hoodie and pulls the hood up and walks in without looking around. He can tell already that he’s going to despise it here. Everyone’s in vibrant colors, laughing, talking. They all know each other already. Who changes schools senior year?

You’re being punished, the voice in his head says. This is your punishment.

I don’t fucking deserve this, he thinks back. This is extra. 

He finds his locker without incident, hangs up the backpack.

The classes proceed mainly uneventfully. There’s a constant feeling of déjà vu; he has done most of senior year before; he knows the math, he’s read half of the books for English already; even the history is familiar. He’s learned this material before. He keeps his head down in the hallway, taking silent stock of the rest of the students. All schools have weird kids, he thinks. Except this one, apparently. Where does it keep them?

The name doesn’t take, either. It still says Ben on all the forms.

The first time he corrects a teacher, some girls snicker at him. This would not have happened to Ben, he thinks. Ben would have – he doesn’t know. He already can’t pick out the people Ben would have wanted to talk to, so maybe that’s progress of a kind. Everyone seems equally repulsive, like he’s gorged himself on people for days and even thinking about getting anywhere close to another one makes him kind of want to vomit.

At lunch he sits by himself with a copy of 'Ender’s Game.' Reading is one of the few things of Ben’s that he still likes to do, but only if he reads as fast as he can and tries not to think too much. It’s good to have other people’s words to drown his own out with.

“That’s a good book,” a voice says.

Kylo looks up.

The voice is coming from a red-headed boy in a trench coat. The trench coat is too big for him but it looks like he’s committed to it. The sleeves swallow his hands. He’s tall but scrawny, like his growth spurt was split into two shipments and only one has arrived. “The sequel is good too,” he says. “Have you read it yet?”

“No,” Kylo says.

“Can I sit with you?”

Kylo sighs inwardly. “Sure.”

The red-headed kid plunks down an unwieldy leather satchel thing that he appears to be carrying instead of a backpack.

“I’m Hux,” he says.

Kylo swallows. “I’m Kylo,” he says. So far the name hasn’t taken with anyone yet but no one has initiated any conversations with him yet either, so: firsts. Possibly.

“Kylo,” Hux says, and Kylo waits for the inevitable, “what-kind-of-a-name-is-that” and “that’s-a-made-up-name-right” and the “but-it-says-Ben-here-on-this-form.” It doesn’t come. Hux pulls a wrapped sandwich out of his absurd bag and takes a small bite. “You’re new.”

“Yeah.”

“This place is terrible,” Hux says. He seems to like talking but have few opportunities for it. “Everyone here is just awful. If someone blew this place up they would be doing the world a favor, in my opinion. Do you like it so far?”

“Not really,” Kylo says.

“The teachers are idiots too. Everyone is fake and cares about fake things that don’t matter. Have you read ‘Atlas Shrugged’?”

“No,” Kylo says.

“You should,” Hux says through the sandwich. “It sheds a lot of light on things.”

“Atlas Shrugged?” Kylo asks.

Hux nods. “I’m reading the Fountainhead now.”

“Oh,” Kylo says. “Is that the sequel?”

“Not exactly,” Hux says. He chuckles to himself. There’s something weirdly theatrical about the chuckle. “Is that the sequel. Are you a senior?”

“Yeah.”

“So you only have to spend one year in this miserable hellhole.” Hux finishes the sandwich. 

“Are you a senior?”

“Yes,” Hux says. “I skipped a year, though. You have kind of an accent, or the absence of an accent, more precisely -- where are you from?”

“I used to go to boarding school,” Kylo says, thinking, _please don’t ask please don’t ask please don’t ask_. He has prepared this incomplete truth and a series of lies to follow it but they are going to run out of room real quick.

“That’s _different_ ,” Hux says. “Huh. And now you’re here. If there’s a bright center to the universe you’re at the high school that it’s farthest from. In case that was not already abundantly clear.”

“What are you doing here?”

Hux’s face does something evasive. He looks at what remains of Kylo’s lunch: an orange. “Are you going to eat that?”

“No,” Kylo says.

Hux takes it. He studies it. “There’s pen on it.”

Kylo shrugs. “My mom was trying to be funny.” Hux rotates the orange. There’s a little circle drawn in pen on the upper right quadrant so it looks like a miniature Death Star.

“It’s a Death Star,” Hux says, getting it. “That’s actually kind of great. A Death Orange. So you’re into Star Wars?”

“Yeah,” Kylo says.

“That’s cool.”

“I’m actually building a model Death Star now. In my spare time.”

“Nice.”

“It’s pretty delicate work.”

Hux starts peeling the orange. His nails are bitten to the quick and it takes him a few goes to break the skin. “

“So how did you wind up here?” Hux asks.

Kylo shrugs. “It’s not important.”

“Is it secret?” Hux asks. He successfully bisects the orange. “I won’t tell anyone if that’s what you’re concerned about. Look around.” He casts a disdainful eye around the cafeteria. “Who would I tell? These people barely exist.” Hux scratches his face and a smear of something comes off on his finger. Kylo notices this without putting any words to it. Hux has delicate pale skin that you can see his veins in, bluish. But only under one eye. The skin under the other eye is matte, almost unnaturally. “You’re not going to tell me.”

Kylo shakes his head.

“Fine.” Hux studies him. “I can figure it out.”

“Yeah?”

“There’s only one new kid this year,” Hux says. “It’s not difficult, if you’re not a moron, which, obviously, I’m not. I have quite a high IQ, actually. Probably the highest of anyone in this room. Only thing is the lists said the new guy’s name was Ben, not ‘Kylo.’”.

“Right,” Kylo says, “but I killed him and took his place.” He bares his teeth in something that isn’t really a smile.

Hux rolls his eyes.

Kylo frowns at the orange. “If you’re not going to eat that give it back.”

“I’m going to eat it,” Hux says. “Only, not yet. Why Kylo? Ben’s a way better name than Kylo. Kylo sounds like a failed DJ. Kyle-O.”

And – there it is. Kylo feels almost amused that Hux is trying to make fun of him. His sense of the food chain in this school would place Hux at the bottom of it, maybe not even visible to scale on the same chart.

“Why are you being a douchebag?” he asks. “You don’t even know me.”

Hux encompasses him with a look. “Sure I do,” he says. “You’re the weird emo kid. I wanted to see if you were a potential ally who liked good books and things or if you were going to be one of those douchebags with elaborate hair who listens to a lot of music with bad lyrics played by guys in eyeliner.”

“You seem to have a very complete picture of this guy,” Kylo says.

“You seem to be that guy," Hux says. "Pity."

“Kylo. And no, I’m not.” Why are you getting angry, Kylo thinks. He’s not worth it.

“Seriously? Look at yourself. Let me guess. Nice suburban house, I bet, two cars, dog, happily married parents, but your grandpa died or something deeply tragic happened or maybe you just listened to the wrong album and now it’s,” Hux mimics, “the WORLD doesn’t understand my PAIN.”

Calm down, Kylo thinks. People have been bigger douchebags to you on purpose -- he doesn't know -- you're mad at them, not this weird kid sitting in front of you holding half an orange. Hux takes a bite and scratches his nose again and some more of that substance comes off and – oh. Oh. _Well_. It goes from shock to pity to ammunition in three seconds flat. _Power,_ Kylo thinks. No point in making friends anyway. “You’ve got a black eye,” he hears himself saying.

Hux stiffens and he knows it's landed. “It’s the lighting,” he says. He pulls the collar of his coat up.

“You put make-up on it,” Kylo says.

Hux freezes with his hand on the coat. His eyes have a remarkable capacity to freeze. It’s like staring at green ice.

“So it happened at home,” Kylo says.

“Fuck you, Nancy Drew,” Hux says. He pulls his coat around himself and grabs the satchel and goes. He leaves the orange peel on the table.

**

“Did you make friends?” his father asks on the ride home.

“No,” Kylo says. He drums his fingers on the windshield, uneasy rhythm. “I don’t make friends any more.”

“Jesus, kid,” his dad says. “Let’s try to have a little optimism here.”

“Someone sat with me at lunch,” Kylo says. “But I think he hates me now.”

They pull into the garage. Kylo goes straight upstairs to his room and slams the door. He does his math homework first. He has the sense the whole time that he has done the same problems before, maybe last year, maybe years ago. But he still has to work through all the answers. It’s like being in Groundhog Day but he can’t quite remember what he did the last time.

**


	2. Chapter 2

At school the next day there is no sign of Hux. Not that he’s looking for one. But he wonders how on earth Hux manages to camouflage. Red hair and that absurd trench coat: neither exactly blends in.

Now that Kylo knows someone like this exists there are signs of him everywhere.

There’s a trophy case right as you come through the main doors whose entire purpose seems to be to showcase all the ways you can engrave “Hux” into a fancy cup. There’s a debate trophy and what appears to be a chess trophy and a few nondescript bowls with “Hux” all over them, followed by various dates. He’s not even sure what one trophy in it is intended to represent – it’s a kneeling figure in front of a seated figure and it looks vaguely obscene; it can’t be a trophy for performing fellatio but that is the only thing that springs instantly to mind.

But there are also more subtle things. There’s graffiti in the boy’s bathroom on the fifth floor that someone has corrected for grammar in red pen. There’s one of those asinine bulletin boards on which you are supposed to push-pin a picture of your personal heroes, and someone has written “Walt Disney” in neat innocent letters but the accompanying image is Joseph Goebbels. The rest of the board is depressingly straightforward. Kylo wonders for whose benefit Hux has been doing these things all this time. They feel like breadcrumbs, semaphore; they remind him of something he read once online about the package of information that humans sent out into space: music, math, pictures – too much information, Kylo thinks, to just fling out into the universe not knowing what is on the receiving end.

 _In this case_ , _me_ , he thinks, and then thinks, I hope Earth isn’t so unlucky. 

He is impressed enough by this line of thinking to write it down later, at lunch. This time he sits by himself. He doesn’t like the way the words look on the page. His own handwriting is a constant disappointment, too uneven and childish, or maybe it’s the words themselves, the second they leave his mind. In his mind the thoughts are crystalline and perfect but on the page they look wrong. Unfinished.

“What is that,” someone says, “poetry?”

Kylo looks up. It isn’t Hux; it’s someone else. He wonders if it will be important to know who this person is. The guy reminds him of how Ben used to present himself; tall, but he looks comfortable in it; he’s wearing an athletic sweatshirt.

“Can I help you?” he asks. 

“Let me see it,” the guy says. 

He’s accompanied by two more guys, it appears, both big, both the sort of dull-looking individuals who derive all their entertainment from prodding things with sticks. They start to cluster.

 _Don’t make me do anything_ , he thinks. 

“I don’t think it would be of interest to you,” he says.

“I think it would,” the kid says, moving in.

“You don’t want to do this,” Kylo says, “trust me.”

“Troglodytes,” a voice says, behind them, “ _why_?”

 _Hux_ , Kylo thinks. Huh.

Sweatshirt guy turns around. “What do you want, faggot?”

Hux laughs, unamused. “Charming,” he says, “to the last. You have no idea why he had to transfer here, do you, you cretin?”

Something cold wraps itself around Kylo’s stomach and pulls. _How did he find out so quickly_ , he thinks, _how did he, I thought they didn’t, I thought there wasn’t a, I thought part of the deal was there wasn’t going to be a record of anything but that it was an accident, I’ve certainly googled myself enough times to see if there was anything_ \-- 

“Why?” Sweatshirt asks.

Hux shrugs meaningfully. The gesture strikes Kylo as something he has practiced in a mirror before; then again much of Hux seems to be the product of practicing in front of a mirror. “Well,” Hux says, measured, “if you like not being on fire, I wouldn’t antagonize him, is all.”

 _Fuck_ , Kylo thinks, then, _one fucking day how does he already know how did he find out how_ , and the room is too small all of a sudden and he has to do something – he hates moments like this when he feels almost as though he is outside himself watching, wondering, _hey this kid is mad, wonder what he’s going to do, whatever it is it won’t be good_ , and -- in this case that something turns out to be that he pushes the whole table over and storms out. They’re plastic plates anyway.

He walks down the hallway blindly trying to find somewhere where there aren’t people, where he can take it out on something that isn’t people, but there are people everywhere. There are footsteps following him. He gets outside and keeps going, doesn’t stop until he’s at the sports field standing under the bleachers. He slams his fist against one and immediately regrets it.

“Yikes,” Hux says, behind him. For someone who dresses like Humphrey Bogart Hux moves pretty quickly. “So you’re one of those guys who punches walls.” He laughs at what seems to be a private joke. “Figures.”

“How did you find out?” Kylo asks. “How the fuck did you find out?’

Hux looks actually surprised. “I didn’t,” he says. “I was guessing. I'm not even sure what school you came from. But you’re so textbook in every other way. I figured, pyro. Lucky guess, I suppose. Are you going to punch me now?”

Kylo turns to look at him. “You didn’t find out.”

Hux shrugs. “I will eventually,” Hux says. “You might as well tell me.” 

 _Of course_ , Kylo thinks. Then, _I’m an idiot_. Then, _now he actually will find out_. The thought of someone else knowing this brings a chill with it, the idea of watching the knowledge of what happened spread around him like a drop of ink in a glass of water, coloring everything. “Why were you looking out for me?”

“I wasn’t,” Hux says. He scratches his nose. That, Kylo thinks, is his tell. He takes a step closer. Maybe it’s intended to be intimidating but if so it fails to have its intended effect. He's simply not big enough. “Listen,” Hux says. “What you said yesterday at lunch, I hope you wouldn’t spread—”

Kylo’s surprise must show on his face. “What?” he asks. “You’re kidding, right? Jesus, is that why?”

Hux stands very still, looks him dead in the eye. “You’d be surprised what some people will do,” he says. “When they think they’re helping.”

Kylo huffs out a laugh before he means to. “Yeah,” he says. “No, I wouldn’t be surprised by that. You don’t need to worry about that.”

Hux seems almost visibly relieved. “So,” Hux says. “The fire?”

Before he can even think about it Kylo slams his fist into the bleachers again, hard. Hux’s eyes go wide for just a second. At first he doesn’t feel pain, just something like heat. Then it starts, licking over his knuckles. It’s oddly calming at first and then it just hurts.

“Wow,” Hux says. “Okay. Won’t ask. Will find out, won’t ask.” There’s a pause. “So. You’re pretty fucked-up." 

Kylo sees no reason not to agree. “Yeah,” he says. Then. “Fuck.”

“When you fight a wall, the wall usually wins,” Hux says. “Moron. Here. Let me see it.” Hux studies the hand for a second, dispassionately, prods the knuckle of Kylo’s ring finger once. “Can you wiggle them.”

Kylo does. It hurts but it’s doable.

“I don’t think it’s broken, but you should go to the nurse. She’ll probably send you to the hospital for an MRI. Do you know where the nurse is?”

Kylo looks at him. “You do,” he says. He waits to see if Hux is going to take this as humor or if it’ll put his back up.

Hux grins, ruefully. “Yes,” he says.

On the way there they pass the trophy case with the weird kneeling figures and Kylo asks about it before he can stop himself.

Hux makes an almost-amused noise. “It’s for oratory.”

“Oratory,” Kylo says. “Is that what they’re calling it.”

He can almost hear the sound of Hux’s eyes rolling. “Original. The seated figure is supposed to be Abraham Lincoln.”

“You’re performing oratory on Abraham Lincoln?" 

Hux laughs. It’s an actual laugh. It sounds as though he doesn’t get much use out of it. “He should be so lucky,” he says.

Kylo very carefully does not file this information anywhere at all.

 

The nurse gives him a bag of ice and calls his parents. Hux goes before he can say thanks – not that he was going to say thanks, but before he can say anything.

He can hear his mother on the other end of the line, recognizes the disappointment, and instead of listening he puts on his headphones. 

His dad pulls up a few minutes later. The ride is mostly silent except for bad music that Han likes. Finally Han turns it off and looks at him. “Jesus, kid. What were you thinking? That’s your hand. You need it for things.”

It’s so much less angry than Kylo expects. _I wish you were mad_ , Kylo thinks. _It’s weird that you’re not mad, it’s weird that you’re – confused and sad more than anything. I know you don’t understand but it’s weird knowing that you know you don’t_.

“It’s fine,” Kylo says.

“It’s not.”

“Uncle Luke’s fine without his.”

“He lost his for a reason.”

“Grandpa didn’t have one either.”

“Losing hands is not a family tradition,” Han says. “Kid, seriously. I hope you’re not – waiting for an incident to take yours off, or some nonsense, because that’s bullshit.”

“Sure,” Kylo says. They pull up. “Should I, like, sign myself in or do you want me to wait?”

“Sign yourself in,” Han says. “I’ll park.”

Kylo does. He gives them the other name. He feels awkward about it but somehow he doesn’t want to make things any more difficult for his parents today.

While he waits the pain in his hand settles into a dull throb, even when the doctor pokes at it. It’s like watching the ocean – beat, then a surge, then another surge. It throbs like the blood in his veins. It’s weirdly grounding. 

As he walks down the hallway towards the MRI he passes a waiting area where there’s a family of three, quiet, subdued, eyes down. It takes him a second to realize he knows them. _Ben_ knows them. They’re parents from his old school. Only one of their kids sits with them. He remembers her as being absolutely tiny but she’s had a growth spurt and is fully embracing One Direction, it appears. The other one isn’t anywhere to be – oh.

Right. 

Shit. He reads the sign: Long-Term Care Ward.

So that’s why.

 He hopes they didn’t notice him. But he feels eyes on him as he walks, prickling, uncomfortable, like scalding water thrown on the back of his neck.

“Ben?” the little girl asks.

He turns around. Can’t help himself. He is pretty sure her name is Holly but when it comes to names he has never been one hundred percent. But clearly she recognizes him; she and her backpack bounce cheerfully over.

“Ben?” she asks. “Oh my god, it’s you! You look different!” 

“Hey,” he says. He makes a Holly-like sound for her name and she smiles. “You too. Nice backpack.”

She shrugs. “It’s okay.”

He can’t think of anything to say. “How’s—“ He knows the name. Nick. The kid who wore Yoda everything every day. They were both always the last ones getting picked up. They used to talk Star Wars and Ninja Turtles.

Why did there have to be kids there, he thinks, and then, why did it _lock_.

“Nick’s the same,” she says. He can’t tell from her tone how bad that is. At least he’s alive, Kylo's mind supplies. That’s something. “What happened to your hand?” she asks. 

“I was dumb,” he says. “Don’t be dumb.” He says it in his PSA voice in case her parents are listening. “Don’t fight walls, they win.”

The MRI technician comes to get him and he waves bye with his swollen hand. Holly waves back.

 People liked Ben, he thinks. Then, don’t start.

 **

The hand isn’t broken. Of course not. Nothing’s ever broken, even the things he wishes would break. 

Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation, the doctor tells him, wrapping a bandage around it. RICE. Easy.

“Great,” Han says. “Thank you.”

 **

The ride home is quiet. 

“What happened?” his dad asks.

 “I just got upset,” Kylo says. “I wasn’t thinking.” 

“I know,” Han says. “I don’t mean that. I mean what happened when your mother asks. Were you helping some men move a piano upstairs and they dropped it on you, or –”

This, unexpectedly, hurts worse than anything else has hurt all day. 

He wishes they would stop trying. He starts to cry before he even notices that's what he's doing. “That’s dumb,” he says. “She’ll know.”

“Hey,” his dad says. He’s never been good with crying. “Hey. It’s okay.”

“I was,” Kylo says, voice wavering, “I was uh I was. Fuck.” His mother would say “language” but his dad, mercifully, doesn’t. “I tripped." 

“Need to do better than that,” his dad says. “Uh. Fell off a ladder?”

“Bar fight.” Kylo rubs his eyes on his sleeve.

“Hey,” Han says, “it’s you, not me.” His face screws up a little. “You uh you look a little newspapery.”

“I what?”

He gestures. “Black, white, and red all over.”

“Oh.” Kylo rubs his eyes more. His fingers have black streaks on them when he stops. He wipes them on his pants. _I wish you wouldn’t be so nice to me_ , he thinks. “Wow, Dad,” he says out loud. “Wow.”

“Heh.”

There’s a silence.

“Piano moving,” Kylo says. “I think that sounds the best.”

**

That night his mother gets home late and he hears the sound of cheerful conversation bubbling up from downstairs and then he can hear her coming up the stairs and doing the things she does to adjust herself before she can talk to him. He wishes they wouldn’t do that but both of his parents do. It makes him hate them more. If they would just be themselves – but they’re these nervous tentative versions of themselves that are trying to pass muster with him and it makes him loathe them.

“Hey,” she says. “You okay?”

“No,” Kylo says, because it’s the truth. He holds his hand up to illustrate. “Piano moving accident.” 

“I heard.”

A long uneasy silence stretches out between them.

“Please try to take care of yourself,” she says.

“Why?”

“Because there are a lot of people who care about you.”

“They cared about Ben,” Kylo says.

“They care about _you_ ,” she says.

He sighs. “I have to finish my math homework.” Lie. He wonders if she can tell. Probably.

“Okay,” she says. “Love you.”

“I know.”

Later he lies awake feeling his hand throb. It hurts. It hurts a shit-ton. He wishes it hurt more.


	3. Chapter 3

They make him see a counselor at school. She wears thick spectacles and "hm"s at him over them; he can't tell how old she is. Seventies? Sixties? Once you pass a certain age it gets hard to tell. She takes a lot of notes and doesn't say much. 

Do you want to hurt yourself.

No.

 

Do you want to hurt anyone else.

No.

Why did you do it.

I wanted to see what would happen.

The last time he said that to someone it was a lie too. He is better at lying than Ben was, he thinks. 

**

Halfway through lunch the next day Hux sinks into the chair next to him. He was, he confesses, somewhat expecting this. “Hello, imbecile,” Hux says. It sounds more like a nickname than an insult. “Broken?”

Kylo shakes his head. “Want to sign my cast?”

“Not technically a cast,” Hux says. Today he has a microwave-safe bowl of nondescript noodles. He reaches into Kylo’s bag and fumbles around until he finds the day’s orange, studies it. “No drawing this time.”

“You can’t just take my food without asking.”

“The question is not who is going to let me,” Hux says, twisting his mouth into a mimicry of someone or something, “it is who is going to stop me.” He grins to himself. “You need to read _Atlas Shrugged_.”

“You said.”

Hux returns the bag. “What’s in the notebook?”

“Nothing really,” Kylo says, because he knows “things I think might be profound” will sound asinine out loud. “Stuff.”

“Stuff,” Hux says, through a mouthful of noodles. “Riveting.” Kylo wonders if he has eaten all his meals alone for years; Hux is otherwise neat but he eats like an absolute slob, like he’s never had to do it in front of people. “Well I hope you weren’t going to do a sport.”

“No,” Kylo says. 

“Did you used to?”

“I used to swim,” Kylo says.

Hux cocks his head to one side, studies him. “I bet you were good at it. You’re tall. You possess some fish-like characteristics.”

“I was,” Kylo says. “I was very good.”

Hux finishes the noodles. “You’re sure you don’t want to tell me who you are and where you come from?”

“I’m sure.”

“I’m going to find out,” Hux says.

“I’m sure you will,” Kylo says. The thing is, he is sure. It’s only a question of finding the right holes to dig in. If Hux is anywhere near as smart as all the trophies make it seem he’ll have no difficulty at all.

He glances across the table at Hux scraping the bottom of his noodle bowl and ponders what will happen when Hux actually knows who he is and where he comes from and what he's done. Maybe nothing. Maybe it's the sort of thing Hux will find impressive. He's not sure whether he likes that about Hux or not, that he isn't sure, that he thinks Hux might actually think it was _cool_. 

"Yes?" Hux says. 

"What?"

"You're staring at me," Hux says. "Do you have a question?"

"Sorry," Kylo says. 

**

That afternoon on his phone during history he googles the kid from the hospital to see how bad it is. It sounds bad. But there isn’t much info. There’s a facebook page from his family that posts a lot of cute pictures of Nick in what Kylo recognizes as his favorite Yoda t-shirt, with a lot of inspiring-sounding messages about rainbows and silver linings. He wonders who maintains it. It sounds like someone vomiting up a Hallmark card.

It says on the page that visitors are always welcome.

He thinks, don’t be stupid. Ben would think he could fix this. You can’t fix this.

But the kid doesn’t know that, Kylo thinks. He might be happy to see you. You could take him an action figure or something. He doesn’t know, maybe –

That night when he gets home he goes through his collection of action figures and picks out a Yoda and writes FEEL BETTER, YOU WILL, on a piece of notebook paper before he can convince himself that this is an asinine thing to do.

But in the morning it looks dumb and he crumples the note up and tosses it into the trash.

**

Things begin to feel -- not normal, normal is the wrong word, but -- more predictable. He has a routine now. Things happen, reliably, in a certain order. Breakfast. His mom drives him to school. Classes. Lunch (Hux). Classes. His father picks him up. Usually. The house feels less like it's holding its breath around him. They don't say anything overt but he can feel a distinct absence of eggshells when they walk around him. 

He takes Chewie out for a walk one afternoon and the damn dog stops to pee on everything. "Come on," he says. "Seriously?"

The dog ignores him. 

"Seriously?" 

Chewie woofles amiably, proceeds down the sidewalk a few feet, and resumes urinating on a fire hydrant. "Come on," Kylo says. "You should be ashamed." He gives the leash a tug. 

Something glints black in the corner of his eye. He freezes, mid-pull. The dog's ears prick up, too. But when he turns it's nothing. No black car. No window rolling down, beckoning. Just empty street. 

You're imagining things, he thinks. 

Then, what if it was?

No, he thinks. No way. Even if they know we're here -- they wouldn't -- You fucked everything up. 

Chewie barks and he looks up automatically, half expecting to see the car. But it's still nothing. Just a squirrel. 

"I'm taking you back in," he says. 

All that night he's jumpy. It wasn't him, he thinks. It wasn't them. They wouldn't come. But what if. But it wasn't. But--

He doesn't fall asleep for a long time. 

**

He notices that it has become _their_ lunch table by the end of the second week when someone has scrawled something derogatory on it in black sharpie. Hux is rubbing at it with a wet paper towel when he gets there. 

“Someone decorated,” Hux says, shrugging.

“Thanks for fixing it.”

Hux makes a dismissive gesture. “Just doing my part to decrease the entropy in the universe.” He tosses the paper towel at the trash can, misses. Someone points, says something Kylo can’t quite make out; a ripple of malicious laughter rises up from the next lunch table over to envelop them. He watches Hux bristle momentarily, then contain himself. He gathers himself up and goes over to pick the paper towel up. But someone is already in the way. It’s the kid from his second day, Kylo realizes with a jolt. Athletic Sweatshirt. Sweatshirt kicks the towel away and Hux scrambles for it and – there’s more laughter.

“Stop it,” Kylo says. He slams his other hand on the table. 

Sweatshirt whirls. “Emo psycho,” he says.

“Exactly,” Hux says.

“What, he’s your boyfriend now?” Sweatshirt asks. 

“You seem extraordinarily fixated on my potential sexual proclivities,” Hux says. “Is there something you’d like to share with the group?”

Hux gets a sneaker in the ribs for this. He grunts. Kylo wondered when Hux developed such an acidic tongue and why he doesn’t bother to shut it off when Sweatshirt is in kicking range. He must have seen the kick coming. Probably Hux decided the alternative was getting the kick without getting to talk at all.

At this point the cafeteria staff begin to notice and the clump of people around Hux dissipates into the rest of the cafeteria like salt stirred into a glass of water. Hux comes back to the table and sits down with a faint “oof.”

“Does this happen a lot?” Kylo asks.

He doesn’t see Hux’s eyes for a second. Hux is looking down at his chest, studying the damage, prodding. When he looks up there is a well of anger there unlike anything Kylo’s seen in years. It makes Hux look dangerous. “They’re small,” Hux says. “They don’t matter.” 

He reaches into one of the pockets of his coat and pulls out a notebook and pen, undoes the elastic on the notebook, and scribbles something at the bottom.

“List of grievances?” Kylo asks.

 “Essentially,” Hux says. He smiles. It’s unpleasant.

Kylo's phone goes off in his backpack. He pulls it out. _hi broke down can you take bus sorry not my fault_

“Shit,” Kylo says.

“What?” Hux asks.

“My dad’s car broke down again,” Kylo says.

“Is that all?” Hux shrugs. “I can give you a ride if you don’t mind staying until debate club is over.”

“Sure,” Kylo says. “I don’t mind.” He texts back _dont worry about it_

"Oh," Hux says, and pulls something out of his satchel. "Here."

Kylo takes it before he's figured out what it is. It's Atlas Shrugged, a little beaten up and dog-eared. Some passages have been underlined; of-fucking-course. "Required reading," Hux says. "Let me know if you have questions."

**

He gets to the classroom after debate club has already started. At first he lurks outside the classroom. Then curiosity gets the better of him and he pushes it open a crack. 

“And fourteenth and finally,” Hux is saying, as a nondescript brunet kid in glasses cowers at the podium next to him.

Kylo closes the door again. 

Well, he thinks, that’s about what I expected. 

He goes and sits on the steps in front of the school, pulls out Atlas Shrugged. The back cover is not very promising. 

For a second he doesn't notice the car.

When he does he feels it more than sees it. The awareness prickles like gooseflesh along the back of his neck. Fuck, he thinks. He almost turns around and goes right back indoors. Then he makes himself stay still. Look down. Keep reading. Maybe they don't recognize you. Maybe he doesn't -- like hell, Kylo thinks. He has to know.

It makes a circuit around the parking lot.

He remembers when seeing that expensive black car made him feel excited rather than like someone is pouring cold liquid into his chest, filling up his lungs.

Power, he thinks, then, Ben had no idea.

Then, they own you now.

He opens the book and tries to start reading but it all seems to be about trains. 

Finally Hux comes out rubbing his hands together, looking extremely pleased with himself. “Most people are not fully rational,” he says.

“Right,” Kylo says.

He shuts the book. 

“Right here,” Hux says, making the car flash its lights. It’s used but someone has taken good care of it.

“Nice.” 

“Thanks,” Hux says. He opens the doors. 

There's an air freshener in the vent that makes the car smell like the inside of a dryer. Unpleasantly so. It makes him wonder if Hux smokes; you wouldn't need something as powerful as that if you didn't. 

“Hey do you mind driving around a little while before you take me home?" Kylo asks. "I think we’re being tailed.”

“That’s absurd,” Hux says.

“I promise it isn’t.”

“All right,” Hux says, and he doesn't put the key in yet, “then you have to tell me why it’s not.”

Kylo swallows. "Will you drive if I tell you?"

"You're scared," Hux says. 

"I'm not," Kylo says. He is trying to think what the easiest piece is to say. “Okay. Anakin Sky-- Darth Vader was my grandfather.”

“Like actual—” Then Hux gets it. “No shit. The kingpin.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s – that’s crazy, what was that like?” 

“I never knew him,” Kylo says. “But I’ve heard stories. Like. They would bring him cake in prison.”

“There has to be a better story than that,” Hux says. The car begins to move. They turn, then turn again. Kylo can't tell if the car is still behind them or not. “He could have a man killed just by waving his fingers the right way. That was how he got the Vader nickname, right?”

“Something like that. I just was really impressed with the cake. It was the one story my uncle would tell. Because you aren’t allowed to have things like that in prison usually.” 

“I know that,” Hux says. “Obviously.”

“And they would let him have everything – he had fresh eggs and milk and everything just the way he wanted it. My uncle says the first time he visited him in prison it was, like, nicer than anywhere he’d ever been his whole life. But he and my mom were, like, babies when they put him behind bars, my uncle thought whoever his father was had died, my mom genuinely didn’t know she was adopted until she came across this headline like, trial lawyer adopts kingpin’s baby. But my uncle gets this call when he turns eighteen, it’s like, hello who is this, and this massive deep voice on the other end was like I’m your father, I can prove it, I’m in prison, would you like to meet.”

“Jesus,” Hux says. He’s riveted. “So he went?”

“He went but he’s always been – like – he was a schoolteacher, he was in the military, he started a—” Kylo catches this train of thought, “like, his whole thing is doing good in the world.” 

“Mm,” Hux says noncommittally. “So what happened?”

“He tried to get him involved,” Kylo says. “He never forgave him. He saw him again, like, right before he died he came out of jail on compassionate release or whatever but – He never talked about it. Then he took all the money and put it in—he went legit with it.”

“Oh,” Hux says. He turns, abruptly. "You weren't kidding, by the way."

Kylo squints up into the rearview. He can't make out any faces. He suspects Snoke is the one driving. 

“Most of what I know about grandpa I know from this other guy.” Kylo indicates the car. “He uh used to work for him. He still does – things like he used to. He was at the funeral. My mom said not to talk to him so – obviously I talked to him the second she turned her back.”

“How was the funeral?”

“It sucked,” Kylo says.

“Yeah?” 

“My mom and my uncle both hated him,” Kylo says. “They, like, resent him because he was above the law.”

“Most people are small,” Hux says. “Most people never have the guts to be above the law.” Hux is getting a little worked up about it. “Survival of the fittest should be the only law.”

“That’s what I think too,” Kylo says. 

“It’s the only correct thing to think,” Hux says. “If only more people knew."

"Yeah," Kylo says. 

There's a silence. 

"Where do you actually live, by the way?" Hux asks. 

"Have we lost him?"

"Don't worry about that," Hux says. "Watch this." He hits a button on the dashboard and blue and red lights flare to life. The black car pulls a U-turn, veers off down a side street until Kylo can't see it any longer. 

"Wait," Kylo says. "Wait, what?"

"My dad's the chief of police," Hux says, grimly. "Once you get to know me it explains everything about me, I've been told."

"I don't think so," Kylo says. But he thinks, _oh_. _So that's why. So that's why he can't._

"Exactly," Hux says, as if he's heard the thought. "Now you get it." 

They drive on in silence. 

"We're 94 Wicket Drive," Kylo says. 

"Why would he follow you?" Hux asks. 

"I did something for him," Kylo says. His fingers start drumming on the window again, nervous. "I-- tried to, anyway. I think he wants to talk about it."

"I'd be curious to meet him," Hux says. 

"No, you wouldn't," Kylo says. "Trust me."

They drive on in silence for a little while and then Hux turns into the driveway. "Going to invite me in for dinner?"

"Do you want to come in for dinner?" Kylo asks. 

"No," Hux says. "I just wanted to see your face when you thought I would."

There's another pause. "You can, you know," Kylo says. Hux shoots him a startled look; he feels like Hux only asked because he wanted to show that he knows he could presume on people, if he wanted. So when he doesn't it seems like it's by choice. Not because he's scared to ask, but because he's choosing not to. 

"Thanks," Hux says. "But I'm fine." I can take care of myself, everything about Hux is shouting. (Lie, Kylo thinks.) 

"Thanks for the ride." Kylo gets out and slams the door.

Hux doesn't pull out of the driveway immediately; he fumbles in the glovebox for something and Kylo realizes he was right, Hux does smoke. Hux rolls down the window, sticks a cigarette between his thin lips. A momentary flare of light illuminates the dashboard. Then Hux glances back at him and he tries to look like he wasn't staring. 

He wasn't, he thinks. At any rate he doesn't know why he would have been. He finds his key and is through the door in a few fumbling seconds. 

**

That night he goes through his trash and finds the folded note, crumples it back up and makes another one. But he's not sure how it's going to look in the morning. 


	4. Chapter 4

“Oh God,” his dad says, at breakfast. “Atlas Shrugged, kid? Seriously?”

Kylo shrugs, rereads the same sentence he’s been stuck on for the past several minutes. The words all individually make sense but when strung in order he has difficulty seeing how they fit together. 

“Isn’t this one of the warning signs?” Han asks.

Leia chuckles, glances up from a giant pile of paperwork that is occupying most of the breakfast table, sees the book, rolls her eyes.

“Hux says it picks up towards the middle,” Kylo volunteers. He wonders why he’s bothering to defend the book; if he has to read one more word about trains he’s going to punch something. He has no idea what he’s going to be able to tell Hux about it. He has the feeling Hux will judge him for not liking it; think it means he’s not an ubermensch or one of those other words Hux is always throwing around.

“Hux?” Leia asks. “That’s the kid who gave you a ride home?”

“Yes,” Kylo says.

He can feel his parents exchanging a hopeful look.

“His dad is the chief of police,” Kylo says. He hopes his parents will mistake this for information about Hux and they won’t start on the usual barrage of ‘how’d you meet him-what’s he like-what’s he into-where does he live.’ He isn’t sure why he doesn’t want to talk about Hux. Not that he’s keeping his friendship with Hux a secret. They’ll be relieved to know he has a friend, he thinks, but maybe learning anything more about Hux will change that relief back into worry. He hates it when they worry. And Hux is so different from anyone he’s been friends with before; Han is used to bros and athletes and stoners who call him by his first name while getting pizza on the upholstery, not – indisputable trench-coat weirdos like Hux. He doesn’t know what they’d make of each other. He thinks they’d laugh at each other and it would make him like both of them less. Hux would think it was pathetic that Han was trying to be cool and Han would think everything about Hux was completely ridiculous. They would both be right but it would make him feel bad all the same.

He grabs the Yoda figurine and the note and shoves them into his backpack before he leaves. He knows his mother will see them if he leaves them. She pokes through his things; he knows she does; it was one of the losses of privilege that she inflicted on him after he got into trouble. Somehow he doesn’t want her to.

( _Is it because you’re afraid she’ll ask?_ he thinks. _Or because you’re afraid she won’t?_ )

At school as he’s putting his backpack into his locker he hears a squelching sound behind him and muffled laughter. When he turns Athletic Sweatshirt is there with a squeeze-bottle of mustard and a split-second later there’s mustard in his face.

It mostly misses his eyes but not entirely; it starts by stinging and then burns. He goes to the bathroom and tries to wash it out. Hux is at the next sink over doing the same thing.

“Got you too?” Hux asks. “I thought your reflexes would be better than mine.”

“I guess not,” Kylo says.

“They got your back,” Hux says. “Just for your information.” He splashes more water on his face and then dabs at it with a paper towel. “What’s black and yellow and red all over?”

“What?”

“Look in the mirror,” Hux says. The eyeroll is practically audible. “Really, Kylo. Keep up.”

Kylo sticks his head in the sink and tries to get it under the faucet. He mostly succeeds.

“What are you even doing?” Hux asks. Hux wets another paper towel and comes over. “Hold still.” Kylo does. Hux scrubs methodically at a spot on his upper back.

“Is there a lot?” Kylo asks.

“I’ve gotten most of it.”

“I like Atlas Shrugged,” Kylo says, suddenly. “It’s good so far.”He doesn’t know why he felt the need to say something. He hopes Hux won’t ask any follow-ups. He can’t think of a single other thing to say. He supposes he can ask if the trains are a metaphor but they’re _obviously_ a metaphor. But Hux doesn’t ask. He makes a disgruntled sort of sniffing sound and stops scrubbing. Kylo shuts his eyes, opens them. It’s better now. The stinging is gone. He’s also somehow managed to soak half his hair in the sink. He pushes it out of his eyes.

“You look like a drowned rat,” Hux says. He drops the mustard-covered towel in the garbage can. “At least you’re not wearing eyeliner today.”

Kylo almost laughs. “Was it that noticeable?”

Hux groans audibly. "Was it that _noticeable?_ Listen to yourself." He halts at the door. "See you at lunch?”

“Yeah,” Kylo says.

**

His mother is working on a big case that keeps her in the office through dinner and after a failed Hamburger Helper Han gives up and they order takeout for three nights straight. First pizza, then another, different pizza, then something that is apparently aspiring to be Chinese takeout but seems to be falling far short. 

“Next time I decide to order the General Tso's Chicken at Bubba's Hickory Country Buffet," Han says, "tell me what a terrible idea that is." 

Kylo nods. "It says 'General Toe's Chicken' on the side actually," he says.

Han picks up the container, studies it. "So it does." He laughs, tries another forkful, can't. He's clearly building up to something. “You busy tonight,” Han asks, a little too casual, “or you want to help me with something? I found an old wreck at a garage on the edge of town, thought we could – go look for parts, fix it up. Like we used to.”

Like we used to, Kylo thinks. Like you and Ben used to. When Ben thought he was you and you thought the same thing and that thought made you both so goddamn happy. He pushes the oily rice around his plate and doesn’t look up. “I’m busy,” he says.

“Yeah,” Han says. “No. Okay. I figured.” He fishes around in the take-out container. “You want your fortune cookie?”

“I’m not you,” Kylo says, not looking up.

“You never said,” Han says, somewhat pathetically. “You didn’t like it, I mean. I’m not trying to force you to do anything you aren’t interested in. I know—” He emits this awful forced laugh. Kylo keeps his eyes on his plate. “I know you’re not me, I mean, give me some credit.”

“Do you?” Kylo says. 

Han sighs. “Kid, I’m trying.”

“Why?” Kylo says. This time he looks up. “Dad. Seriously. Why? Why are you trying? I know you think I did it on purpose. You don’t have to pretend.” 

“I don’t think that,” Han says. This time he looks down. _Liar_ , Kylo thinks. _You think I can’t tell?_ “I told you.”

“That’s bullshit,” Kylo says. “Stop fucking lying. You’re, like, nervous around me all the time. You’re scared of me.”

“I’m not scared of you, Ben,” Han opens his fortune cookie, frowns at it. “ ‘You have many friends.’ Thanks, cookie.” He eats it, glances over at Kylo. “I’m not. Okay. Fine. I'll admit: I just don’t know how to talk to you anymore.”

“That’s fairly obvious,” Kylo says. He pushes his chair back and gets up. “I’m going upstairs.”  

**

He can’t sleep.

 Is this going to be it, he keeps thinking, over and over. Is this going to be the rest of my life? Are they never going to look at me the same way again? 

His eyes still sting.

The thought of every day being like this is almost incomprehensibly horrible. It is a desert extending out in all directions. He writes the thought down but on the page it looks stupid again. Everything always looks stupid on the page. There always feels like there’s so much inside him trying to make its way out but whenever he puts it into words it looks small and cliched and meaningless. Maybe there isn’t anything.

Dear mom and dad, he writes. I am sorry I’ve been such a burden.

Then he stops and scratches it out, over and over the words until he almost can’t see they were ever there.

**

The next day he skips out of class and takes the bus over to the hospital. On the bus he rummages in his backpack and finds Yoda and gets the note ready. 

He explains who he’s visiting and the lady at the desk gives him a significant look. He doesn’t quite understand what it means until the second he sets foot in the room. That’s when he realizes it’s not like Nick is usually awake. He thought somehow that he was awake and taking visitors but it’s – not like that. He’s just lying there hooked up to tubes and they seem to be doing all the work for him. He’s skinny. His face looks like it hasn’t moved in weeks, like it’s not a living face, just a model of a face made from wax.

He looks pretty bad.

 _Why did you think it would do anything other than fuck you up to see a little kid hooked up to all those tubes_ , he thinks. He puts the toy Yoda down on the bedside table without the note. Then, _look at him. Look what you did._

 _I didn't mean to_ , he thinks. Then, _Does that matter? You did this._  

“Hey,” Kylo says, quietly. He looks around for a nurse. If someone hears him doing this he won’t do it at all. “Nick. I’m sorry. I don’t know if you can hear at all but -- I didn’t know. I was – I was doing a favor for someone – so–“

He hears an amused sound. “A favor?”

 _Fuck,_ he thinks. He doesn’t even have to look up to know who it is. That voice, gravelly and low. He can piece together the face attached without turning around; the old man with the red scar that always makes it look like his face is freshly scraped, sallow complexion, long grey expensive coat, tall cane. Everything about him grey. Snoke.

“Go on,” Snoke says. “Don’t mind me.”

“I’m done,” Kylo says. He turns around.

Snoke’s just as he pictured but he’s wearing a red scarf. He looks well. “I was hoping to talk to you, Kylo,” Snoke says. Kylo almost winces at the name. “I hope you’re not done talking to me.”

Kylo doesn’t trust his voice, doesn’t say anything.

“You did well,” Snoke says.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen like that,” Kylo says. 

Snoke’s look softens. “Of course not,” he says. “Most unfortunate.”

“You said there wouldn’t be anyone inside,” Kylo says.

“I didn't know,” Snoke says. He keeps the soft look. He shifts his hands on his cane. Kylo notices for the first time that his fingernails are dirty. “You believe me, don’t you?”

“Why did the doors lock?” Kylo asks. “How did they lock?”

“I don’t know,” Snoke says. “Kylo. It’s done. You can’t change the past. Now everyone knows where you stand. They want you in. We can start to take things over. It’s what you wanted.” He pauses, shoots Kylo a look. “At least I thought it was.”

“It’s what I wanted,” Kylo says.

“Good,” Snoke says. He changes his posture slightly, like something's been settled. “Then we can proceed. You’re a hard man to track down, Kylo.”

Ben always liked the way Snoke used the nickname, said ‘man’ not ‘kid,’ treated him as an equal, deferentially, even. But it – something about it makes him uncomfortable now. It feels obvious, manipulative. But Ben was always an idiot.

 _And now here you are_ , he thinks, _stuck in the smoking wreckage of Ben’s life choices_.

“Then it’s settled. We can start to communicate. Where’s your locker?” Snoke asks. “What’s the combination?”

He remembers how readily he gave this information to Snoke the last time, how excited he was the first time a note came telling him where and when to meet, or a package full of contraband to move from one place to another, or a fancy pocket-knife, or Sun Tzu’s Art of War, or – little gifts. How he’d walked down the hallway thinking, _I know something none of you will ever know. I’m the heir to an empire. I’m going to do actual good, not their petty narrow-minded rule-abiding type of good. I’m going to make a difference and be great_.

He can't think of anything else to do so he writes down the locker number and combination on the corner of what would have been the note, tears the rest off, hands the little curly slip of paper to Snoke. Snoke smiles.

“Excellent choice, Kylo,” he says. “We need you. You’re his family. They respect that. They want you in charge.”

“You mean you in charge,” Kylo says. He knows the answer. He wants to make Snoke say it. “But you need my name.”

But Snoke doesn’t appear ruffled. “But Kylo,” he says. “You’re the key. Besides, I’m not going to live forever.”

But the way he says it Kylo isn’t sure if he believes it.

He walks back out to the bus stop and there’s Hux’s car.

“Great,” he says, “there’s two of you stalking me.”

“You weren’t at lunch,” Hux says, dry. “I saw you get on the bus. Was your friend in there?”

“Friend’s a strong word,” Kylo says. He doesn’t say anything else. “Am I an idiot?”

“Yes,” Hux says. “Next question.” 

“I didn’t used to think so,” Kylo says.

“Do you mind if I smoke?” Hux asks. “It sounds like whatever this is going to take you a while to wrap your head around.”

“Go ahead,” Kylo says.

Hux lights a cigarette. Idly, Kylo watches his hands. They have an economy of motion that’s strangely calming to watch. Producing the cigarette, flicking the lighter – it’s like a ritual Hux has mastered, like the hosts of coin and card tricks Kylo tried when he was younger but never could get the knack of.

“What?” Hux says. 

“What?” Kylo says. He looks away. 

“You’re weird,” Hux says. He blows a cloud of smoke out the window like a miniature dragon. 

“Thanks,” Kylo says.

They sit there in silence for a while. He keeps having a funny feeling like the black car is following them even though there's no car and they're not moving. Just a horrible prickling sensation on the back of his neck like he's being watched. Like he'll never stop being watched.  _You're back in_ , he thinks. _He made that choice and now you're stuck. You're in for life now. You can't undo it. You can only keep going._

“You know,” Hux says, “I don't know if this helps, but nothing most people do in high school is irreparable.”

“Most people,” Kylo says.

Hux taps the end of the cigarette against the window. “Right.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the next chapter should be up sooner than this one was, apologies! and in it mysteries will be revealed! Thank you for all the comments! Even though I am currently massively massively behind on responding I really appreciate them!


	5. Chapter 5

He waits to see what he's going to find in his locker but for a few days there's nothing.

On the third day there's an origami Yoda. He can't tell if it's a joke or a warning or what. It feels like a punch in the gut. He unfolds it in case there's a message but it's blank, empty. He throws it into the trash. 

On his way out of the school building that afternoon Kylo hears an unmistakable “FUCK!” from the parking lot, stops, and turns around.

Hux is standing in front of his car staring unhappily at a dent in the hood. It’s a big dent, the kind that would happen if someone heavy jumped up and down on the car. As if to clear up any doubt that this is in fact what has happened, someone has thoughtfully egged the car and scrawled something rude on the bumper in lipstick.

“Those assholes,” Kylo says.

Hux doesn’t say anything. Kylo is almost afraid to look at him. Hux smoothes the front of his coat down and inhales sharply through his nose. “God I hope it still starts,” he says.

“My dad can give you a ride home—” Kylo offers, limply.

“No, thanks,” Hux says. 

“Or somewhere else. 

Hux gets in and the car makes a funny grinding sound like a garbage disposal with something stuck in it for a few seconds, then starts.

“Okay,” Hux says. “Okay. Okay. Get in.”

 Kylo does. “Where are we going?”

“To fix this,” Hux says.

He drives with an excess of caution away from the school, down progressively smaller roads, until they reach a dilapidated-looking little garage with hubcaps strung out in front of it like the shields of defeated enemies. No, Kylo thinks, that’s stupid.

There’s a car up on a winch and a pair of blue-jeaned legs sticking out from under it. Hux raps on the top of the car and the owner of the legs rolls out. She reminds Kylo of a picture from his history textbook: Rosie the Riveter. Same shirt, same rolled-up sleeves, same jeans and big workman’s gloves. Also goggles. But she’s blond.

She takes in the car with a look. “Not again. Hi, Hux. Who’s the new guy?”

“Kylo,” Hux says. “Phasma. Phasma, Kylo.”

“Hello,” Kylo says.

Phasma rolls all the way out, stands up, wipes her gloves off on the jeans. “Sorry I’m not shaking your hand,” she says.

“Don’t be.”

“I assume it’s something I can fix,” Hux says, gesturing at the car, “but I wanted to be sure before I started.”

Phasma pushes the goggles up on her forehead then gingerly pries the hood open.

“Oh, yeah,” she says. “They barely did anything. It just _looks_ bad. Same guys?”

“One assumes,” Hux says.

“How often does this happen?” Kylo asks.

Hux shrugs. “I told you this place was Hell.”

“You need me to come down there, break some arms?”

“Please don’t,” Hux says.

“I worry about you,” Phasma says. She glances over at Kylo, gestures at Hux with her wrench. “I used to babysit this kid. Back in the day. When his mom was still--”

Hux’s face gets a tense set to it. “It’s the fuse box, right?”

“Yeah,” Phasma says. She unscrews something, “Looks like the plate bent. Straighten that out and screw everything back together and it should be all right.”

“Thank you,” Hux says. “That’s what I presumed.”

“How about I unhinky the hood while you do the box?”

“You don’t have to,” Hux says.

Phasma ignores him, turns to Kylo. “You know anything about cars?”

“Does he look like he knows anything about cars?” Hux asks, and Kylo can hear his eyes rolling.

“A little,” he says. It comes out defensive. “My dad and I – we used to – he’s kind of a hobbyist, fixing up old cars and that kind of a thing.” He shrugs, sticks his hands into his pockets. “It’s been a while, though.”

Phasma retrieves a rubber mallet and begins banging the underside of the hood with it. “Your dad’s not Han Solo, by any chance?”

 “That’s the one,” Kylo says.

“Already a local legend,” Hux mutters. “Wonderful.”

Kylo glances over at him. He’s gotten the fuse box out and undone the metal plate on the back and is bending it back into shape like it’s personally offended him.

“Can I help?”

“Just sit there and be decorative,” Hux grunts. “Anyway your hand.”

“It’s fine now.”

Hux drops a screw, curses under his breath. Kylo picks it up and hands it to him. He watches Hux’s fingers work; it surprises him how deft they are at something like this; he would not have expected it. They seem like their utility should be limited to indoor things like typing and writing indignant letters in longhand but they’re surprisingly – clever with the wires and metal plate and screwdriver.

You spend a lot of time staring at his hands, he thinks. Anything you’d like to share with the class?

I don’t know, he thinks back to himself. They’re just surprising, sometimes, is all.

Hux’s phone goes off in his pocket and he hands the screwdriver to Kylo, rubs his hands on his pants without thinking, and starts typing back, lips creased in concentration. Kylo tries to glance at the screen but Hux notices him looking and glowers at him so he turns his focus back to the car and the plate that needs screwing back on. He thinks he knows where the rest of the screws go, but he’s not quite sure.

“This go here?” he asks.

Phasma peers around the hood. “No,” she says. “Not that. The one right next to it.”

Kylo adjusts accordingly.

 “Yeah, Kylo, your dad came by a little while ago,” Phasma says, still leaning over, “talking about fixing up a car or something.”

“He likes to do that,” Kylo says. “Was it a piece of shit?”

Phasma shrugs, non-committal. 

“I bet it was. Most of the cars he picks aren’t worth the time. He works and works but in the end they’re still junk. You can’t fix junk.”

“Some people love to tinker.”

Hux puts the phone back in his pocket. “Give that to me,” he says.

“I’ve got it,” Kylo says. “I can finish it.”

Hux hovers nervously over him.

“Relax,” Phasma says. “He knows what he’s doing. You should let him help you with your thing.”

“What thing?” Kylo asks.

“Your – wiring project.”

“Wiring project?”

Hux shoots Phasma another warning look. Kylo finishes with the plate and hands her back the screwdriver.

“Thanks,” Hux says. “How much do I—”

Phasma waves him off. “Don’t worry about it. Good to see you. And your friend.”

Hux opens his mouth and almost looks like he’s going to argue the point but then he closes it again. “Thanks.” He turns to Kylo. “Come on.” 

“Nice to meet you,” Kylo says. He gets into the passenger seat.

They drive away, back towards Kylo’s house. The car sounds normal again.

“I wish she wouldn’t do that,” Hux says.

“Do what?” Kylo asks. “Fix your car for free?”

“I did most of it,” Hux says. “I mean – act like she feels – you know – like –” Hux seems to notice himself becoming incoherent and stops, pauses, gathers himself. “I don’t like to be the object of pity.”

 “I don’t think that was pity,” Kylo says. “I think she's just fond of you.”

“People aren't _fond of_  me,” Hux says. “Haven’t you learned anything?” His phone buzzes in his pocket again and Kylo watches his fingers clench on the wheel. “Have you seen ‘Fight Club’?” Hux asks, suddenly. 

Kylo can’t quite follow the transition. “What?”

“I said have you seen Fight Club?”

“No,” Kylo says.

“I have it on my computer if you want to watch it.”

 “Like right now?”

 “What else do you have to do?”

 “It’s a school night,” Kylo says.

Hux’s pocket buzzes again and Hux almost winces, then carefully schools his expression.

“Okay,” Kylo says. He tries to keep it casual. “My place?”

“Sure,” Hux says, and he almost keeps the relief out of his voice but doesn’t quite.

Kylo types _can someone come over from school_ then deletes it then types _can hux come over_ then types _hux is coming over is that all right_ and a few seconds later gets a _sure that’s fine. is that atlas shrugged guy?_ _does he want dinner_? He looks up from the phone and over at Hux. “My mom says do you want dinner?”

Hux shrugs.

 

**

“Mom,” Kylo yells, when he gets through the door, “Hux, Hux, mom,” and then they’re halfway up the stairs before she can walk down the hall from her office to say hello.

“Is this a household where people remove their shoes?” Hux asks.

Kylo throws his backpack down next to his bed, pushes a big pile of clothes off his computer chair so Hux can have somewhere to sit. “Does it look like a household where people remove their shoes?”

“Never hurts to ask,” Hux says.

The door opens a crack. Leia sticks her head in. “Hello,” she says. “I hope you like spaghetti.”

**

Dinner is just as bad as Kylo expected it would be.

No. Worse. When he pictured it (not that he pictured it) he thought it wouldn’t take so long. He wants to go to the bathroom just to be out of it for a moment but he knows that if he gets up to go to the bathroom then he can’t get up to go to the bathroom a second time without it looking strange. He wishes Hux would eat faster. He has already finished his own plate of spaghetti. Given that Hux usually slurps his noodles and eats like he was raised by wolves who haven’t fed him anything in days, Kylo cannot conceive why this is taking him so long.

“So,” Leia says, “you’re the one who likes Atlas Shrugged?” 

“Of course he is,” Han says. 

Hux has been spinning the same forkful of spaghetti meticulously onto his fork for the past maybe three minutes.

“Yes, ma’am,” he says. 

“Ma’am,” Leia says. “Wow, I feel old.”

 “Sorry,” Hux says. He gets the spaghetti onto the fork and eats it all in one bite, then starts meticulously spinning the next one. “Mrs. Solo?”

 “Leia is fine,” Leia says.

 Han rolls his eyes. He grabs the container of parmesan cheese and dumps a big heap of it onto his plate.

 “I hear you like to work on cars,” Hux says, turning to Han.

 Kylo wonders if his own eye-roll is audible. Chewbacca sits panting in the corner of the room and he pushes a meatball onto the floor to see if he can coax him over.

 “B- _Ky_ lo,” Leia says.

“What, mom?” 

“He’s already had dinner.”

“He looked like he wanted a meatball.”

Chewbacca ambles over and eats the meatball off the floor, slowly, in chunks, then starts licking a large unrelated section of the carpet.

“He will eat literally anything you put on the floor,” Leia says. “He ate half my briefcase.”

Han chuckles. “Maybe that’s a sign he wasn’t getting enough roughage in his diet.”

Hux laughs too. Immediately Han stops laughing. He puts the lid back on the cheese and then looks at Hux. “Did you know that Ayn Rand used to take advantage of much younger men?”

Hux stops his fork mid-spin. “I’m not sure that is how I would describe it.”

“Oh my God,” Kylo says. “Dad. What.”

 “Look it up,” Han says. “You can look it up. Richard Branden.”

“Nathaniel Branden,” Hux says, “actually.” He eats one forkful of spaghetti and then another one. “It was a mutual relationship.” He takes the lid off the cheese and pours some onto the rest of his spaghetti. “They had an arrangement with his wife and her husband. They were ahead of their time in a lot of ways.”

“How did we even get on this?” Kylo asks. He picks up another meatball.

“Kylo,” his mother says, “no.”

“What?” he says. “I was just going to eat it.” He eats it, to prove the point. “Are we finished?”

Hux finally takes the hint, tries to wolf down the rest of his spaghetti, starts coughing. He drinks a whole glass of milk to cover it but the whole conversation goes dead and Kylo watches his ears turn bright pink. He starts picking up the plates and taking them to the sink.

“Thank you,” Hux says, picking up his plate and “Mr. and Mrs. Solo.”

“I don’t think we’ve ever been called that,” Han says.

“No,” Leia agrees. “Who are those people? They sound very upstanding.”

“Okay,” Kylo says. He loads the plates into the dishwasher. He just wants this to be over. “Great. Thanks, Mom. It’s nice to have edible food for once.”

** 

“Your parents seem okay,” Hux says. He has set up his laptop on Kylo’s computer desk and he is spinning slowly and majestically around in the chair in a way that makes Kylo think of the Emperor.

“Well, they’re not,” Kylo says. “I don’t know. Maybe they are. But.”

“But?”

“But,” Kylo says. “So many things.”

“I guess,” Hux says. He climbs off of the chair and settles on the floor with his feet kicked up. He hasn’t taken off the trench coat. Kylo has this weird urge to take a picture of him like that, just because it’s maybe the strangest thing he’s ever seen someone do so self-seriously. “What?” 

“Nothing.”

Hux shrugs, pushes play.

 

**

The movie is okay. He stretches out on the bed and watches while Hux lies on the floor. Periodically he glances down at Hux’s face, illuminated by the light of exploding buildings. The whole time Hux looks like he's waiting to move a piece on a chessboard. 

By the time the movie is over it’s almost eleven. Somehow Kylo knows what’s coming next. He decides to pre-empt it.

“You can stay here if you want,” he says.

Hux yawns, exaggeratedly, reaches up and shuts the laptop. “Cool.” He pillows his head on a pile of laundry – sweatshirts, mostly. “Thanks.”

They lie there in the dark for a while. He can hear Hux’s breathing starting to even out, or sound like it’s trying to sound like it’s starting to even out.

“Hux,” he says, “I’m glad I saw that and all but – that wasn’t why, was it?”

Hux doesn’t say anything but he can hear his breathing change; he’s clearly awake.

“If you don’t want to go home for whatever reason you can just like tell me,” Kylo says, “you don’t have to come up with this whole ruse, or whatever.” 

There is a long silence. “I told you, I don’t like to be the object of pity.”

“I don’t,” Kylo says. “I mean. Pity you, I mean.”

“How could you tell?” Hux asks.

“I’m not actually an idiot,” Kylo says.

“Couldn’t you just go along with it?”

“I am,” Kylo says. “I just want you to know, like, you can come here, it’s not a big deal.”

“Sure,” Hux says. “Okay.”

Hux's phone is lying on the carpet a few feet in front of him and Kylo sees a message flash on the screen. It starts with ‘where the fuck are you’ and goes downhill from there. It’s gone in a moment but it makes him feel sick to his stomach. Hux grabs for it but too late. 

“There are people you can tell,” Kylo says. 

“Who’ll _believe_ me?” Hux asks. There’s another silence. “Word to the wise, never inform my father that you’re going to be late because you have to fix the car.”

“Noted.” 

“I hate this,” Hux says. He picks up a sweatshirt and fluffs it. “The last time he was this mad I spent the night at a laundromat. I did the same load of laundry over and over. You can sleep at a Laundromat and people assume you’re supposed to be there.” He puts the sweatshirt down again. “I guess as long as I’m surrounded by laundry.”

 “Yeah,” Kylo says. “It’s a theme.”

Hux yawns, a real yawn this time.

"Do you need a pillow?"

"I'm fine."

There's another silence. 

“I actually do know what it's like,” Kylo says.

“Bullshit.”

“There was,” Kylo hears himself saying. “There was this – building at my old school. A library. And I started a fire there. For – for Snoke. There were things there he wanted and he didn’t want anyone to know he had taken them. Only.”

Hux perks up. “Only?” 

“Only. There were. Little kids inside. I didn’t know that.” He’s amazed how dispassionately he’s able to recite this fact.

“You don’t have to tell me this,” Hux says.

But somehow he wants to. In the dark, like this, it's easier. “But the worst part was that nobody believes I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“Oh.”

“My parents say they believe me but I – I can tell and they don’t.” 

“Kylo,” Hux says.

“Because the doors locked.” 

“Did you lock them?” Hux asks.

“No,” Kylo says. “I didn’t know they locked. I didn’t think they would lock. I think they must have locked by themselves.” He swallows. “It kind of fucked me up a lot.”

“Thanks for telling me.”

“You have no idea what it’s like when people look at you and all they see is the most awful thing that’s ever happened to you.”

“I have some idea, actually,” Hux says. “Why don’t they believe you?”

Kylo sighs. “Would you believe me? A building burns down with kids inside and the door locked? It’s pretty fucked up to be like, oh, yeah, I meant to burn the building down only I didn’t mean for the door to lock.”

“That seems perfectly rational to me,” Hux says. He rolls over onto his back. “Why aren’t you in jail?”

“My uncle hates jail,” Kylo says. “He says that’s where they got their claws in grandpa. He covered the whole thing up.”

Hux makes a disapproving noise. “To me that’s worse.” He points. "You have stars on your ceiling."

Kylo shrugs. “It’s what my uncle thought was best.”

"The stars?"

"No, the other thing."

“Do your parents know?”

“They know what he told everyone: that there was an accident and this building burned down. They also know it was somehow my accident but they don't know, like, the specifics of it at all.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.” Kylo turns over on his back, stares up at the ceiling and the plastic stars.

"Did anyone make it out?"

"Some of them did," Kylo says. "Not all."

"I'm sorry."

There's a silence. Kylo yawns, then Hux does.

"So," Hux says suddenly, "you're probably not in for Plan A, then."

"Plan A?"

Hux shrugs. "Kind of my own personal Project Mayhem."

"The wiring project?" Kylo asks. 

"That's what I told Phasma," Hux says. "Technically it is a wiring project. Technically." He yawns again. "Never mind. Good night."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for how slowly this is going! thank you for all the comments, sorry i am so far behind in my replies! more action soon, i promise!


	6. Chapter 6

When Kylo wakes up it takes him a second to remember everything that has happened. Hux isn’t awake yet or is pretending not to be. He’s curled up protectively on the floor in his trench coat and Kylo for some reason Kylo thinks of a hermit crab, like the coat is his shell, but it’s not even the right shape for him it just happens to be what he’s crawled into. He debates writing this down.

Hux yawns awake. He takes a moment reorienting himself and then almost smiles, like he’s relieved to find that this is where he is. He stretches. “Morning.” 

“Morning,” Kylo says.

Hux folds himself up into a sitting posture. “Can I use your shower?”

“Sure,” Kylo says. “Do you need a change of clothes?" 

“These pants are fine,” Hux says. “But yes uh that would be appreciated.”

Kylo rifles through one of his dresser drawers, produces a t-shirt with Darth Vader on it that is always a little small on him but he figures would probably be all right for Hux and a pair of boxers.

“Darth Vader?” Hux snorts. “Wow.”

“Sorry if everything’s big.”

“You’re not _that_ enormous,” Hux says. “Please.” He grabs the bundle of clothes and heads for the bathroom.

By the time Kylo remembers that he’ll need a towel the water is running and the door is shut. He approaches the door and raps on it. “You can use the towel that’s in there!”

“What?” Hux shouts back.

“I said, you can use the towel that’s in there,” Kylo yells.

“Got it,” Hux says.

Kylo tries to think what the embarrassing things might be that Hux would find inside the bathroom. Nothing springs instantly to mind but when Hux emerges from the bathroom tugging the t-shirt down over his jeans and rubbing his hair absent-mindedly with the towel, he’s smirking and holding a rubber glove in one hand, the fingertips stained black.

“I suspected that was not your original hair color,” he says.

Kylo groans and pulls his sweatshirt hood over his head. “If you’re going to make fun of me,” he says.

“No,” Hux says. “I was just – observing.” He goes to the wastebasket to put the glove back in, halts there facing it for a moment with the glove pinched between his fingers. There’s a strangely uncomfortable pause. “If you’re worried it looks, like, bad, don’t be,” he says, finally, very measuredly. It’s somehow more embarrassing than if he hadn’t said anything, like Hux thought he was fishing for compliments or --

“Thanks,” Kylo says.

Hux tugs at the hem of the shirt again. It occurs to Kylo that he hasn’t really seen him without the trench coat, ever. The shirt is tighter on him than he was expecting. Hux’s arms are very pale, like they don’t get any sun at all, but they’re – _fine_ arms. They’re somehow more imposing than what he was picturing Hux’s arms would look like under the coat, not that he’d given it any thought. You can see muscle in them. It’s peculiar; he can’t think of anything Hux does that would require muscle, except maybe tinkering with the car, but even that – He wonders how big the bicep the shirt reveals actually is, if he could span it with his hand. It’s an oddly tactile thought. There’s tiny light hairs on the arm only visible where it blocks the light.

Hux has a neck, too, he thinks. (Of course he has a neck, you idiot, his mind supplies. What the fuck, Kylo.) He had this information before in theory, but now he can see the actual neck emerging from the t-shirt, pale and unfreckled and curiously vulnerable-looking.

 He grabs another towel and a change of clothes and goes into the bathroom and gets into the shower and thinks, why does any of this surprise you? Because he’s a person, he thinks back. Not that he wasn’t before, obviously. Only he was – mostly – he was all walls no windows, does that make sense?

He sticks his head under the spray and shakes it back and forth. _if you’re worried it looks, like, bad, don’t be_ When he plays them over again in his head the words land differently. There’s something almost exciting about them. His parents have always made fun of the hair, Han especially; Leia just says nothing in a way that he thinks means that she read a parenting book that said negative feedback made your child more likely to entrench himself in his bad choices. He thinks privately that it looks kind of striking and forbidding. It looks more like he feels. But Hux clearly thinks it looks – _Oh my God_ , Kylo thinks, _you’re accepting fashion feedback from a guy who wears a trench coat everywhere all the time_.

“You okay in there?” Hux yells through the door. “Your mom is asking about breakfast.”

“I’ll be right out,” Kylo says.

**

“I have a request,” Kylo says at breakfast, stabbing his toast with a fork. “Can I start putting in hours behind the wheel for my permit again once my hand gets better?” 

“We can think about it,” Leia says. 

“What’s to think about?” Han asks.

 “Han,” Leia says.

“You know it’s a good idea,” Han says.

“You’re just saying that because you keep forgetting to pick him up.”

“It’s not that I _forget_ ,” Han says.

“This is great toast,” Hux says.

Kylo still has no idea what to make of Hux in front of adults; he’s quieter but also strangely formal.

“We’re going to think about it,” Leia says. “Thank you for driving him yesterday.”

“It was my pleasure,” Hux says.

**

Kylo arrives at lunch to discover that Athletic Sweatshirt and his gang have commandeered their usual table and are using it to sell tickets to a Homecoming Dance. He intercepts Hux on his way into the cafeteria.

“You want to eat outside?”

“Sure,” Hux says. He glances at the table of tickets. “Underwater?” One eyebrow quirks upwards. “Like a mortgage?”  


“I think it’s supposed to be sort of under the sea,” Kylo says.

“I know,” Hux says. “I was being facetious.” He fiddles with the coat; Kylo catches a glimpse of the shirt under it. It’s strange being so aware of Hux’s body; he supposes Hux has always had one (that’s dumb, he thinks, your thoughts lately are even dumber than usual) but – this information had always been more theoretical than practical. It’s sunny out. He takes off his own sweatshirt and sits on it; Hux doesn't. Hux pulls his coat collar up. Kylo reaches into his lunchbag and discovers that there are two of everything; he supposes this is the kind of impressive forethought that has gotten his mother where she is today.  

“You look hot,” he says, handing Hux both oranges.

“What?” Hux says, glancing quickly over at him.

“I mean,” Kylo says, “the coat, I mean.”

“I am hot,” Hux says, “but better to marinate than to burn, as St. Paul sort of said.”

“You really burn that easily?” Kylo asks, biting into his sandwich.

“Like a witch wrapped in dynamite, my dad says.”

“That’s -- vivid,” Kylo says.

 “Vivid. That’s certainly one word,” Hux says. He unbuttons the coat, then rebuttons it.

“I can’t believe homecoming is next weekend,” Kylo says. “I still feel like I just got here.”

 “You can’t?” Hux asks. “I feel like I’ve been preparing for this day for my entire life.” He finishes the first orange and starts on the second, grinning at some private joke.

**

The next day there’s a note in his locker in Snoke’s neat handwriting that reads ‘when was the last time you spoke to your uncle?’ and Kylo writes back ‘months ago,’ folds it up, and puts it back. He wonders what Snoke is planning. He hasn’t seen the car much; in a strange way he feels safer now that he knows he’s caught. It’s like being a fish in a tank; at least you don’t have to look around constantly for nets and hooks.

**

He doesn’t see Hux at lunch for the next couple of days. It’s odd not seeing him; his absence makes him feel utterly alone in a way he realizes, joltingly, he hasn’t felt in months now. He texts him, _everything okay?_ and gets back a _yeah I just have to finish something_ and then a minute later _sorry_.

The “sorry” is out of character.

He gets another note from Snoke that says ‘you should email him’ and he writes back ‘if I am going to do that I am going to need to know why’ and then he doesn’t hear anything more.

He sees a police car at the school one afternoon and his stomach drops. Then Hux gets in. He sees a red-haired man with grey at the temples and an unpleasant face and Hux’s expression is unreadable so he doesn’t wave. He texts, _everything okay?_ again and there are three dots for a while but no text ever comes.

** 

“What is it?” Leia says, on the ride home. “You seem out of sorts.”

“I’m not,” he says.

 “Okay,” Leia says. “Well, I’m here.”

“No, you’re not,” he says. He wishes he could stop himself from saying things like that; he hates the way she tries to look like she’s not hurt. “Not really. Not lately.”

“I’m sorry,” she says. There’s a pause. “It seemed like things were better.”

“They’re not.”

“What does the counselor at school say?”

“Mostly bullshit things,” Kylo says. 

“Language,” she says, force of habit. Then, “We’re proud of you.”

“Please stop saying that,” Kylo says.

 

**

The next day when Hux isn’t at lunch again he skips out altogether and takes a bus toward the hospital, then past it, then gets off in the vague vicinity of what he thinks might be Phasma's garage. He is mostly surprised that he’s right.

“Hey,” Phasma says, rolling out from under a car. “I know you. You’re Hux’s friend. Kylo, right?”

“Yeah,” Kylo says.

“You just missed him,” Phasma says.

“But it’s a school day,” Kylo hears himself saying, like an idiot. 

“Didn’t stop you,” Phasma says.

“I didn’t think he skipped class. I thought that was more my thing.”

Phasma shrugs. “He said he had a free period. I take it you don’t?” Kylo shakes his head. She glances at the parking lot. “Wait,” she says, “Jesus, how did you get here?”

“I took the bus.”

“You took the _bus_?” Phasma rubs her forehead with the back of one hand, leaving an oily streak. “How? Need a ride home?”

“I was going to walk back to the bus stop.”

“It’s your life,” Phasma says, “But don’t do that. That’s dumb. Were you looking for him or for something in particular or you just didn’t want to be at school?" 

“Yes,” Kylo says.

“I figured.” Phasma grins. “Listen, if you don’t mind helping out a little I can give you a drop home. But you need to get your license, kiddo. It’s hard to live in a place like this and not drive.” 

“Yeah,” Kylo says, “I’ve noticed that. I’m working on it.”

“Hux has been driving since the second it was legal,” she says. “I don’t blame him.”

 “For what?”

Phasma shudders. “Wanting to get out of that house. You ever been to that house?”

“No.” 

“Don’t. Pass me that wrench, would you?”

 Kylo does.

“Thanks. Are you good at untangling cables?”

 “I can,” Kylo says.

“Great. Here is something that used to be 32 feet long and is now a big ball.”

Kylo takes it and turns it over trying to figure out where the knot begins. “What’s wrong with Hux’s house?”

“It’s like – you ever read ‘Great Expectations’?”

“Yeah,” Kylo says. “I had to at my old school.”

“You know Miss Havisham?”

“Yeah.” 

“So her life basically stops the day she gets left at the altar and she leaves all the food out and everything and keeps the wedding dress on – which, gross – and all that. So it’s like the house is frozen in that moment. It’s not a perfect analogy but that’s how it feels when you go there." 

“When did it stop?” Kylo asks, but he feels like he already knows the answer.

 “When his mom died,” Phasma says. “You knew his mom died, right?”

“He doesn’t really talk about her.”

“She was great,” Phasma says. “She was one of those people that if you don’t know them you hate them because you’re like, how could anyone that organized and put-together and nice-seeming not actually be a giant leaping asshole but then you get to know them and no they’re actually one hundred percent great.”

“When did she—”

“She ‘fell down the stairs’ when he was nine,” Phasma says, air quotes flashing in neon over the sentence. "Right about this time of year too." 

“Oh,” Kylo says.  

“Yeah,” Phasma says. “Yeah. Police department investigated, found it was an accident. Some accident.”

 Kylo hands her the untangled cord and she nods. “Thanks.”

**

am getting ride from Phasma, Kylo texts.

where do you dig up these people, Han texts back.

**

 His phone goes off the next evening with a series of texts from Hux.

-can you get a ride to school

-I think so

-good. obtain one. wear a suit if you can. have something to show you

-what is this

But he doesn’t get an answer back.

 He manages to convince his dad to drive; the car coughs resentfully to life and they pull onto the street.

“What’s happening?” Han asks, as they get nearer to the school. There’s a giant inflatable octopus on the announcements sign out front. “Seems to be some sort of party.”

“Homecoming,” Kylo says.

 “Octopus-themed?”

“Underwater.”

“Like a mortgage?”

Kylo rolls his eyes. “Exactly, Dad.”

 **

Hux is waiting in front of the gymnasium. He’s in a suit. It looks – good. Why do you keep being surprised by this, Kylo, he wonders. Because -- he didn't look like someone who would clean up well. But in a suit he looks -- like the kind of a guy that if you liked a certain type of guy you would be very into. (Evasive, Kylo.)

“What is this?” Kylo asks. 

“Not so loud,” Hux says. “Follow me.”

He leads them around the back of the gymnasium, down a flight of stairs, and into a custodial hallway. It’s lit by hanging bulbs at intervals; the floor is concrete; there are pipes everywhere. Kylo can faintly hear the music that is blasting upstairs. 

“Hux,” he says, warily. 

“Look,” Hux says.

He’s not sure what he’s supposed to see. It looks sort of like an oil drum. Hux pats it. “Plan A,” Hux says.

“No,” Kylo says.

“Yes.” Hux pulls what is clearly a remote from his jacket pocket. “I did it. It's done. They don’t have any idea. They’re up there dancing like idiots and – any second could be their last.”

Kylo feels like vomiting. He just stands there for a second. You're an idiot, he thinks. Of course. What could possibly be more obvious? Of course. This would be your only friend. The guy who's trying to blow up the school. “You’re not serious.”

Hux folds his arms. “You have no idea how long it took. I’ve been planning it for years. Every time anyone did anything to me."

Wait, Kylo thinks, maybe-- “But your dad’s not here.”

“Yes he is,” Hux says. “He’s chaperoning. It’s perfect.” He pats the drum affectionately.  

Kylo feels seasick. He sits down. He has to think. He can’t think. He realizes he’s leaning back against the drum. “You always struck me as someone who, I don’t know, wanted more.”

 Hux doesn’t look at him. “I might have at one point,” he says. “This is all I’ve wanted for the longest time.”

“They don’t deserve this.”

“Yes, they do,” Hux says. He gestures. “They’re nothing. They’re nothing and they’ve made my life hell. They’ve let shit happen that nobody should let happen. The world will be better off.”

 “Nobody deserves that,” Kylo says. There’s a pause. “You – you don’t deserve a lot of the shit that’s happened to you either.”

“Ah,” Hux says. “If only that were true.” He sighs. He sits down next to Kylo with his back against the drum too. “You know my mother died. Did they tell you I killed her?” 

“I don’t believe that,” Kylo says.

“She and my father were – arguing at the top of the steps, and – I hadn’t put all my toys away – and she tripped on one,” Hux says.

 “That doesn’t mean you killed her,” Kylo says.

“If I hadn’t left it there she’d still be alive,” Hux says. “It’s my fault.”

 “No, it’s not,” Kylo says. “That’s not how it works. You were a kid.”

“That’s just an excuse,” Hux says. He studies his hands. There’s a spot of oil on one of the thumbs and he wipes it off on his pants. “I just wanted to tell you what was happening before anything did because you’re okay.”

“So you’re just going to throw your life away.” That's not you talking, Kylo thinks, that's your uncle. Whenever he's disappointed he sounds like his uncle. He wishes he had his own words for something like this.  

“What life?”

“So that’s it,” Kylo says, “so you’ve done everything you ever wanted to do and you’ve looked at all your options and decided that you’re just going to be that weirdo dickbag who blew up a building with kids inside.”

“It’s a statement.”

 “It’s not a statement,” Kylo says, “do you know what happens when someone does shit like this? They don’t even print your name in the newspaper. They have big pictures of everyone who died and everyone who ever met them suddenly realized that they were perfect people who were going to do great things and you’re a troubled loner with woman problems.” 

“Ha,” Hux says.

“Please don’t do it,” Kylo says. “At least not tonight.”

“I didn’t know you cared so much,” Hux says, not looking at him. 

Then there’s footsteps down the hallway. “Is someone down here?” a voice asks -- the English teacher, Kylo thinks. A flashlight beam hits the wall next to them. Next to him he can feel Hux tense up. He doesn’t know how much like a bomb the bomb actually looks; he wouldn’t have known without Hux there to explain, but it can’t look good.

“Sorry about this,” Hux says, quickly, and then before Kylo can quite register what’s happening Hux leans over and kisses him; he thinks it must be something Hux has seen in a spy movie. Hux really goes for it, too, like the only way he knows to fake kissing someone intensely enough that you wouldn't notice all that movement around you is to actually kiss him like that. He shifts to get better access and Kylo grunts a little without meaning to; the flashlight hits him square in the back.

“Oh,” the English teacher says – Mrs. Williams, he thinks. She taps him on the shoulder. “Boys. You’re supposed to be upstairs, not down here.”

Hux pulls back. His eyes look startled; his hair is a little mussed; Kylo thinks, _fuck_ , then  _why did I never realize he could be beautiful,_ and then, _oh fuck no, please no, he's literally a sociopath_ , doesn’t look at him. Suddenly his shoes are very interesting.

“I need you to come back upstairs,” Mrs. Williams says. “It’s just safer for us if everyone is in the common areas.”

 “Sorry,” Kylo says.

“Not exactly safer for _us_ , though,” Hux points out.

Mrs. Williams half-shrugs apologetically. “No, I suppose not. But, rules is rules.” 

They follow her upstairs. There’s an up-tempo song playing.  

“Sorry,” she says. “Thank you.” 

“Don’t mention it,” Hux says, a little ironically.

“I’m sorry,” Hux says, quickly, when they get inside the gym and she's gone. There's a spotlight that looks like a starfish dancing over the walls.  

“Why are you sorry?” Kylo asks.

“I couldn’t let her find it. I couldn't think of anything else to do.”

“Don’t be,” Kylo says.

“I mean, but you’re not, but.”

“Not what?”

“You know.”

“I don’t know if I am,” Kylo says.

 “Wait, seriously?” Hux asks, and his voice wavers a little. “Because. I mean. I don't either. But. Okay. Wow.” He clears his throat again. “Lots of information this evening," he says.

“Is your dad here?”

Hux glances around the room, and then his eyes get a hard look. “No,” he says. “He’s not.”

"So it's good you didn't," Kylo says, slowly. 

Hux taps his jacket pocket. “But now I can. Any time.”

“But you won’t.” The music slows.

"I won't tonight," Hux says. 

There's a silence. Hux folds his arms, unfolds them. “Don’t you want to go to college?” Kylo tries, and he winces, he sounds like his uncle.

“My dad thinks it’s a waste of money.”

 “So don’t tell him. You could get a scholarship.”

“Why are you trying to talk me out of this?” Hux asks. 

"Because -- you're like the smartest person I've ever met and you could do whatever you wanted and -- Let's go outside," Kylo says. 

"You heard her," Hux says, "we're supposed to stay in the communal areas."

Kylo laughs. 

"Okay," Hux says, and follows him. They wander down to the bleachers. There are couples making out on various sides of them in clumps of two; enough that Kylo supposes it counts as a communal area. 

"This communal enough for you?" he asks. 

Hux grins. He sits down and Kylo sits next to him. He stretches out a little and one of his knees bumps one of Hux's and neither of them says anything about it but he can feel both of them consciously not moving away from the touch. He feels more aware of Hux than he's ever been. "I just feel like you're destined for great things," he says, before he can decide not to say it. "Don't you?"

"No," Hux says. "But it's nice of you to think so."

"I mean all those times when you were saying, you know, don't bother with other people, they're small, you know, this was all you were thinking of?" Kylo glances over. Hux is looking straight down at the field. "I thought you meant something way bigger than that, like, you were going to be president or, you know, emperor or -- I don't know."

"They don't really have emperors any more," Hux says. He picks some grass and lets it go. "It's going to happen, Kylo," he says. "Not tonight maybe but don't think you can sweet-talk me out of it."

"Is that what I'm doing?" Kylo says. 

"I don't know," Hux says. Hux glances over at him. He looks curiously small and vulnerable. Kylo wants to wrap the night around him like a big coat so he can have stars in his pockets. No, he thinks. Dumb. "What are you doing?"

"I don't know," Kylo says. They look at each other for a second and then either one or the other of them or maybe both of them at once move in for the kiss. Their foreheads bump. "Sorry," Kylo says. Hux's mouth is softer than it looks, a little chapped; Hux kisses him like he's the last rope on the side of a cliff and maybe he is. Hux's long fingers come up and latch on to his shoulders. 

"Shit," Hux says. 

"What?"

"Nothing, you're just --" Hux starts kissing him again, maybe so he doesn't have to talk any more. Hux is warmer than he expected; somehow in the course of this Hux has gotten up on his knees on the edge of the bleacher to get a better angle and Kylo lets himself sink back onto his back, pulls Hux on top of him. Somewhere along the line this turned into a full-on make-out session, no finesse; Hux is warm and won't stop moving on top of him and -- oh, Hux is turned on -- Kylo shifts his hips a little so they can grind against each other and Hux makes half of a delicious sound; Kylo catches the other half in his mouth. Hux pulls back for a second and stares down. His hair is falling in his face. His pupils are very dark. He's mostly something very near and very warm that is blotting out the sky. "Is this okay?" Hux asks.

"Yeah," Kylo says. "Why?"

"If I'm doing something wrong you have to tell me," Hux says, "because I may not know."

"You're not," Kylo says, reaching up and tangling his fingers in Hux's hair, messing it even more, trying to pull his head back down into range. Hux twists away from the hand, grins at him. 

"I figured it out, by the way," Hux says, leaning slowly nearer, settling his elbows on each side of Kylo's head, "one hundred percent, zero doubt, holy God, this is definite, I like guys." 

"Yeah?" Kylo says. 

"Yeah. Fuck yeah." Hux pulls off the jacket one arm at a time. Kylo grabs it, feels for the pocket with the remote in it, puts the whole thing carefully down on the bench. "Let's blow this thing and get in my car and drive across the border."

“Mexico or Canada?” Kylo asks. But he pushes the jacket farther away just to be safe.

"I don't care," Hux says. "You pick."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and finally we have some plot movement with benefits!  
> im going to try to be less lame at replying to comments becuase you are great


	7. Chapter 7

At first Kylo doesn’t notice the footsteps behind them – honestly, it is hard to notice much of anything with Hux enthusiastically writhing on top of him; he has very cautiously over the course of several minutes slid his hand down Hux’s back so now he’s grabbing what can generously be described as Hux’s ass. There is not much to it but touching it on purpose feels incredibly bold, like there’s electricity fanning out from his fingertips. More than that, the way Hux notices and looks up a second from what he’s doing (mainly, making a mess of his neck) and shoots him a smile that’s equal parts shy and gratified and – like it hadn’t occurred to Hux that he could be _wanted_ – and then shifts to downright lewd; Hux leans down and kisses him like, _we could actually fuck, has this possibility occurred to you,_ hot and suggestive and – footsteps. 

He hears a throat clearing. He knows that sound. It could not be a worse throat. Everything in him goes ice-cold in a second. He nudges Hux, who sits up, pulls back, tries to straighten out his suit.

“This seems as good a time as any,” Snoke says, “for our discussion.” He indicates Hux. “Perhaps you’d care to introduce me.”

“No,” Kylo says.

Hux picks up the jacket and starts putting it on. 

“Ah,” Snoke says. “Yes. Well. Let’s go somewhere more private, shall we?” He gestures in the direction of the parking lot.

Hux starts to follow them.

“Is your – friend accompanying us?” Snoke asks.

“Yes,” Kylo says. He glances over at Hux, who looks remarkably composed, given the circumstances.

 They get into the car and drive.

“Nice suits," Snoke says, mouth twisting ironically. 

Kylo doesn't say anything. 

"Thanks," Hux says, same irony parried and returned. 

They arrive at a big house up a long driveway. When they get inside it feels less like a house than a stage-set of a house, a movie set -- as though it is supposed to look like a house when people are watching, only. They walk through a long hallway of fake marble and into a back room. There are several men sitting inside, also in suits, cleaning their guns and looking menacing. The guns already seem extremely clean; Kylo wonders idly how much time they spend sitting in this room cleaning them and looking menacing. Probably that’s the main job requirement. He glances over at Hux and Hux again seems almost incredibly calm. It’s like a switch has flipped somewhere and the Hux who goes to debate tournaments and calmly wipes the floor with people has taken over.

“We need to discuss your uncle,” Snoke says. 

“Oh,” Kylo says. His mouth is still dry. He can feel the men with guns looking at him. Looking at Hux. He wonders if they can guess what they were just doing, if his and Hux’s suits are wrinkled in the wrong places. He wonders if people can always tell. He’s never noticed that vibe from anyone around before but, then again, maybe nobody around was doing it. This makes him wonder about his parents and he pulls himself up quickly.

“It’s pretty clear that there can only be one Skywalker in the business,” Snoke says, adjusting one cuff. “I’ve been operating with the understanding that it ought to be you, but it seems that your uncle’s ideas on the subject have changed.” 

“What do you mean by that?” Hux asks.

Snoke takes him in. He looks – amused, maybe, but intrigued, too. But he keeps addressing Kylo.  “I mean, Kylo, that he’s been making inquiries about returning to the fold. We hear. I, personally –” He twists the head of his cane in one hand “—do not think he can be trusted. Think he means to take us down. But there are others more easily swayed.”

“So what do I have to do?” Kylo asks. 

“I need you to bring him here,” Snoke says. "Where we can talk sense to him."

“He won’t talk to me,” Kylo says. “I’m not even sure where he is, he might be on another continent.”

“I need you to tell him that _we know_ ,” Snoke continues, unruffled. “That what you did, you did for us. That other people know what you did at that school, what he took such pains to conceal. That we have it all on tape. Then I'm sure he'll see fit to grace us with his presence.”

“You have it on tape?” Kylo asks. He tries not to let what he is feeling show on his face. He does not think he is succeeding. His hands are very clammy and he feels seasick. “I thought –” Don’t babble, he thinks. “It was just a distraction while you got that thing you needed, why would you want it on tape—”

“Because you were the whole point,” Snoke says, “don’t you see? You made him complicit.”

He can feel Hux stiffen next to him, the way Hux does when Athletic Sweatshirt accidentally says something that hits too close to home. He glances over at him but Hux doesn’t look back.

You set me up, Kylo thinks. He tries to put the thought away where it won’t show on his face. You set both of us up. Me up because Ben was an idiot and Ben trusted you. Luke because he wanted to protect me, in his way.

“You have them here?” Hux asks.

“I could show you now if you liked,” Snoke says.

“No, thanks,” Kylo says, immediately.

Hux inclines his head.

What the fuck, Kylo thinks. What the fuck why the fuck would you – He can’t help glancing at him, startled. Snoke seems to like whatever he sees on both their faces. “Bring over your laptop, Mitaka.”

One of the guys with the shiny guns – porcine, nervous face – puts down the gun and brings a laptop over.

“Is there somewhere I can plug in my phone?” Hux asks.

“Outlet right there.”

“I don’t have a charger with me,” Hux says, “just a cable.”

“Here,” Mitaka says.

“Thanks.”

“Hmm,” Snoke says.

Mitaka clicks on an icon on the desktop and the screen is suddenly swallowed by four boxes of black-and-white video with time scrolling in the lower left corner. Kylo stares at his shoes. Not this, he thinks, I can’t watch – Ben do this. I can’t watch myself do this.

“Which one do I look at?” Hux asks. “There’s four of them.”

Kylo always hates seeing himself in pictures but he hates seeing Ben in pictures more. He knows immediately which of the four screens to watch: lower right corner, the one that shows the library stacks.

“That’s the library,” Mitaka says, pointing. “Keep your eye on that one.”

“What’s that one with the lockers?”

“That one’s the main hallway in the main building. The other one’s the entrance to the library.”

Those doors, Kylo thinks, those awful doors.

“That one’s just the outside of the main building.”

He watches himself (Ben, he thinks, that was Ben, that idiot was Ben), short hair, colorful clothes, walking into the library with Snoke a few paces behind him.

“Your hair’s different,” Hux says.

“Please fucking shut up,” Kylo says.

Snoke chuckles.

Kylo looks down at his hands, studying the nails. At least the tapes are silent.

He knows what comes next; he doesn’t need to see it. Ben clearing a space between the shelves and stacking paperbacks and balls of newspaper into a neat tepee, like Han showed him when they went on a camping trip. It felt like he wasn’t doing anything wrong; those practiced gestures couldn’t be anything wrong. He’d done this a dozen times before. Then he starts dousing everything in gasoline, carefully at first, like he’s trying not to ruin the carpet, then – with abandon. Excited. 

And then he pauses. Looks at the clock. Snoke told him what time to light it. He looks at the clock and waits for the second hand to click all the way around. Then he tosses in the match.

He glances up in time to watch himself walk through the doors in the other quadrant of the screen. He looks for some sign – maybe they clicked shut? (You didn’t know anyone was inside, why would it have mattered if they’d clicked shut?) – but nothing.

That’s where the memory stops for him. Everything else he has only imagined. He has not had to see.

But Snoke keeps the tape going.

“Please not this part,” Kylo says, because he knows in a second or minute or two they are going to have to see people trying to open those doors and not – kids trying to open those doors and -- not.

Hux reaches a hand over towards his knee in an effort to steady him and Kylo shakes it off immediately like the hand is on fire. On fire. No. Think of another thing. Think of something else. Don’t fucking touch me, he thinks. Then, in a second or two he won’t want to or if he does you’ll never want to go near him again, those are the only options.

Then he hears Hux take in a breath, suddenly, sharply. He tries to conceal it. Kylo glances up at the screen, force of habit, but – there’s no one at the doors when he looks. He wonders what made Hux gasp.

Snoke doesn't seem to have noticed; Snoke’s attention is focused on Kylo where he’s gripping his knees and his fingers are turning white.

This moment, Kylo thinks, my whole life is going to keep coming back to this moment, this thing I did – Ben did – I did. It’s going to keep touching everything else in the rest of my life and destroying it and leaving nothing, the way flame eats everything when it touches paper. No, dumb.

“Please can we stop it,” Kylo says.

“You did this,” Snoke says. “It wasn’t anyone else.”

Hux makes a muffled noise, almost like a laugh, into his fist. “Can I have a copy of this?” he asks.

“Your boyfriend is a sick fuck,” Snoke says. “I like him.” He glances at Hux. “I’d assumed the plugging-in-the-phone thing was a ruse.”

Hux looks levelly back at him. “I thought it would be wiser to ask.”

“It was,” Snoke says, hint of a smile. “Go ahead.”

Hux reaches over Mitaka and clicks something.

Kylo can feel all the color drain from his face. He pulls his knee away from where it touches Hux’s. Hux tries to reinstigate the contact, like he doesn’t notice the nightmare of the thing he’s doing, like he thinks it’s remotely okay.

Consider, Kylo thinks, whether there were ever any indication that he was anything other than what he appeared to be. Why would you of all people ever be an optimistic about people? Of all the people you could have -- 

Snoke looks extremely tickled. “Now,” he says, “how are we going to get to meet with your uncle?”

“I told you,” Kylo says. “I don’t know. He’s in another continent maybe. He’d only come here if there were a funeral or something.”

 “That can be arranged,” Snoke notes, dry. He twists his cane in his hands. Kylo thinks about the little boy lying pale with all those tubes hooked up to him. How easy it would be to unplug – And Luke would come back for that. He would sit there through that funeral with a grim face behind the beard and they wouldn’t talk to each other or even make eye contact maybe. Snoke is still talking. “I thought it might be best to try you first."

 Kylo rubs his face with his hands. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll try.”

“Good,” Snoke says. “Would you care for something to eat? Drink?”

“No,” Kylo says.

“Sure,” Hux says.

“Well, let’s go somewhere, then,” Snoke says. “My treat.”

“I don’t want anything to eat,” Kylo says. Hux elbows him. He shakes his head, twitches away from the touch. Snoke smiles. 

“We can drop you off, then,” Snoke says. He stands to go. “Oh. But first. Before we leave here. Just in case anything caught your eye that shouldn’t have.”

 He gestures to Mitaka who approaches Kylo and begins cautiously patting him down – jacket pockets, pants pockets, legs, arms. Snoke himself steps over to Hux and does the same thing. Hux doesn’t flinch. Kylo can tell he wants to flinch. He feels bile rising in his throat; he doesn’t want to touch Hux again (shouldn’t) (almost doesn’t) but he doesn’t want Snoke to put his elegant hands with dirty nails anywhere near him, either. Snoke touches one pocket, smiles, flourishes a pack of cigarettes. “Smoker?”

“Sometimes,” Hux says.

“Hmm,” Snoke says. He returns the cigarettes to the pocket, tucks them back in.

They ride in silence.

Snoke drops him off at the end of the road so he can walk the rest of the way. He watches the car drive off. He wants to break everything in the world.

His dad is sitting up in front of the TV with the dog asleep on his lap. “Your mother went to bed already,” he says. “Good night?”

 “No,” Kylo says. “Putrid.”

 “Sorry.”

“Why?” Kylo asks. “You didn’t do it.” 

Kylo goes upstairs to his room and slams the door. It makes the model death star on his desk shudder nearer to the edge. He grabs it and throws it to the ground, watches it shatter. It’s not satisfying. Just in case destroying something larger will feel better he knocks over the bookcase too.

His father sticks his head in the door. “Kid,” he says, taking in the room with a glance, “the only person you’re making a mess for is yourself, later.”

Kylo shrugs. “Exactly,” he says. “I hate that guy.”

“Ben,” his dad says, then almost corrects it, then doesn’t. He stands there looking very tired in the hall light, like he can’t figure out what to say. “I thought things were better,” he says.

“They were,” Kylo says.

Han tries another tactic. “What can I do?”

“Nothing,” Kylo says. “Go to bed, Dad.”

The door shuts. He notices six missed calls. Then seven. All Hux. He doesn’t answer.

Then the texts start. pick up, Hux writes, please pick up I can explain.

 

explain what, Kylo types, that you’re a psychopath

I don't know why I thought anything different you’re literally trying to blow up the school

it shouldn't have surprised me that you get off on watching people die

 

I was playing along, Hux types.

please let me come over there, Hux types, I can do this better in person

 

Kylo stares at the phone. Doesn’t type anything. Puts it under his pillow and settles himself on top of the pillow and tries to go to sleep.

 

Half an hour later he hears something plink against the window. Hux is standing in the yard gesturing excitedly.

 

fuck you, he types

fuck you too, Hux types, I’m trying to help

 

Chewie starts barking downstairs and Kylo goes down to try to shut him up before he wakes up the whole house.

He opens the front door as quietly as he can and Hux is standing there.

“Snoke came into the library with you,” Hux says, without any preamble. “But I watched the door the whole time and he didn’t come out before you did. He came out _after_.”

“What are you saying?”

“Can I please come in?”

Kylo steps aside and lets him pass, shuts the door. They tiptoe upstairs.

He lets Hux into his room and shuts the door behind him. He wishes that the room didn’t look like it had been worked over by an irate small tornado. It’s less a mess than a disaster zone.

“I think he locked the door,” Hux says.

Kylo’s heart starts beating very rapidly, so hard he can feel it. It’s relief and anger at the same time. It feels like he’s always known that this was how it really happened but he feels an unexpected surge of rage that he didn’t let himself think it, not really, not officially, until this moment. He sinks down on his bed and stares at the ceiling.

“Did you see it on the tape?”

“That’s why I wanted the tape,” Hux says. “I’m not – like – I don’t – I don’t actually –” He collects himself, sits down on the edge of the bed, very cautiously. “Even before, it’s never like I thought it would feel good to see people get hurt,” he says, finally. “It’s more like I was pretty sure I wouldn’t feel anything about it at all.”

“You would,” Kylo says. “Trust me.”

“I don’t know if I would,” Hux says. “People always say you have to feel certain ways about certain things but I don’t think that’s really true. I think they just say that.”

“You’re wrong,” Kylo says. “I actually think you’d care a lot.”

There's a pause between them, more comfortable. Hux takes in the room at a glance, then sniffs. “Wrecking crew come through?”

“Just me.”

“I know,” Hux says. He starts picking up the pieces of the model in a very efficient manner, lines them up on the window ledge. He rights the bookcase and starts loading the books back in.

“You don’t have to,” Kylo says. He tries to figure out a way to say, I don’t like seeing you do that, I can tell you do that too much. There are so many things that Hux is good at that he shouldn’t have to be; Hux seems to be proud of this ability to restore minor degrees of order with a casual flick of his wrist but it’s also infuriating that he’s so good at it, that he’s had so much practice. “Leave it,” Kylo says. “I’ll do it.”

“I don’t mind,” Hux says. He puts another book on the bookcase. Kylo comes and helps him, silently. “Do you actually think that about me?” Hux asks, not looking at him. “That I’d—how did you put it – get off on watching people die?”

“I’m sorry,” Kylo says.

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Hux says.

The last three books don’t fit anywhere and Kylo shoves them on top of the bookshelf. “Redwall,” Hux says. “You still read those?”

“No,” Kylo says. “But I used to a lot.”

“Me too,” Hux says.

Kylo steps back from the bookcase and flops down on the bed. Hux settles next to him, still cautiously, like the bed is a cup of water and he’s trying not to disturb the surface. “I don’t want you to be disgusted by me,” he says.

“I’m not,” Kylo says, quicker than he expects.

Hux smiles. “Good.”

There’s a silence.

“Would it be okay if I kissed you?” Hux asks. Kylo rolls over on his side so their faces are almost touching. At times like this his face feels cumbersome, like his nose is too large and ridiculous, but Hux reaches for him and tangles a hand in his hair, pulls him in closer, almost smiles.

“You spend so much time thinking you’re a bad person,” Hux says, “but actually you’re like the least bad person I know.”

“That’s not saying very much,” Kylo says.

Hux kisses him, keeps his fingers tangled in Kylo’s hair like mussing it is something he’s been wanting to do for a while. Kylo reaches over and cups his hand around Hux’s arm to see if he can fit his fingers all the way around it. He can’t quite. Hux wriggles. “What are you doing?”

“I was wondering about this,” Kylo says. “How big your arm was.”

Hux tries to shimmy free, laughs. “Size isn’t everything.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Kylo says. “You have nice arms.” It sounds dumb when he says it but not when Hux looks at him.

“You’re just poorly informed,” Hux says.

“Are you going to stay here?” Kylo asks.

“I shouldn’t,” Hux says. “I should go home. I just came here to explain.”

Neither of them moves. Kylo kisses him, careful. Then less careful. Then Kylo pushes him back on the comforter with its dumb snowmen pattern and boldly slides a hand up under his shirt. Hux makes an encouraging noise, grins up at him.

“Fuck.” Hux shudders, bares his throat. “Yes.”

Kylo kisses him there, trying to be careful. “I don’t want to leave a—”

“Well I fucking want you to,” Hux grits back. “I want a goddamn hickey.”

Kylo kisses his neck, worries at it with his teeth, sucks it hungrily, watches a mark blossom slowly on the pale skin. Hux’s skin is so easily marked. He makes another one. He thinks about covering all of Hux like this, slowly, one sharp kiss at a time, until he’s black and blue all over. Hux hisses with satisfaction. Kylo giggles. They’re thrusting aggressively against each other, fully dressed, like the inexperienced teenagers they in fact are but it feels so damn good he doesn’t want to stop.

“We can’t.”

“Can’t what?”

“I’m going to ruin these pants,” Hux says frantically.

“So take them off,” Kylo says, suddenly bold.

Hux shimmies out of them, tosses them halfway across the room in his haste to get clear of them. They land on a lamp and knock it over. The crash sounds very loud. He waits for footsteps but they don’t come. Hux giggles into his neck. He comes in his pajama bottoms with Hux’s sock-covered foot scrabbling frantically for purchase on his shin as Hux rubs against him. There’s no finesse to it. He feels disgusting and terrifyingly proud of himself. He slides a hand experimentally through the flap of Hux’s boxers and wraps nervous fingers around him and Hux comes almost instantaneously at the touch, kisses him with an enthusiasm like they’ve actually accomplished something great.

“Can you stay?” he whispers.

Hux nods. “I can’t leave like this,” he points out. “But I should probably not sleep here.”

He climbs onto the floor.

Kylo reaches a hand down, touches his hair. Hux blinks perplexedly up at him. “Do you have a thing for gingers, Kylo?”

“Possibly,” Kylo says. He keeps touching it. “If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?”

“Not here,” Hux says. “Anywhere but here.” Kylo can feel his forehead wrinkle in concentration. “I don’t know. New York City.”

“You should apply to Columbia,” Kylo says.

“Would you stop,” Hux says. “You’re worse than Dr. Lawson.”

“Who?”

“My history teacher. Always, Hux apply here, Hux scholarship this, Hux I have a letter of recommendation for you literally written and sitting on this desk, all you have to do is ask, so does Ms. Portman—” Hux gestures dismissively. “They don’t realize it’s not that simple.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t think I’d have to explain that to you, Mr. All Black Everything I’m Sick Of Being In This World.”

Kylo yawns. “Are you?”

“Am I what?” 

“Still sick of it?”

Hux doesn’t answer. Maybe he’s asleep already.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoaaa it's a faster update  
> but actually i'm about to be in a busy time without much room for posting or writing so i am making a big push to edit and post as much as i can before that happens


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